Reviewer 2 @reviewer2@qoto.org
Científico antinómico
Joined Feb 2024
And, while I'm here mostly dismissing @failedLyndonLaRouchite snarky response as ungrounded, I am also *very* wary of portraying workers as "uneducated". Working people can think with their heads just fine when they're not spoonfed propaganda, thank you very much. They could see very well the differences between, say, where they could afford to go to the vacation and where Party leaders did, how easy it was get officials to look the other way if you could bribe them, and I could go on. Oh I could.
The joke with overthrowing this snakes' pit of hypocrisy that called itself "socialism", and few were sorry to see it go, was that it got much worse before it got better - and while people's lives eventually got more materially comfortable, they remained more precarious than before, and exploitation never ceased.
Well, not really.
The joke is that the then-really existing socialism is/was just as exploitative as capitalism - which it was. But, this is precisely because it was not "socialism" - quite on the contrary - it's because, for the most part, Bolsheviks & other Communist parties that took power actually *perpetuated* capitalist production relations, by substituting their nomenklatura into the role of the capitalist, maintaining their rule and privileges by continued skimming off the surplus value of labor, this time of the working people of the entire state.
(Things were more complex, of course, and there were many notable achievements e.g. in socializing education and health, but to the first approximation, this was it.)
So the joke is, at the same time, a legit criticism of the Soviet & related systems, and a very shoddy response to @Radical_EgoCom's comment. What it points out, correctly, is that Soviets never succeeded in, and ultimately were never serious about, dismantling the relations of production criticized in the original post - and the criticism is left standing on its merits.
Reviewer 2
boosted
I know some of you think Bluesky is strictly for the birds, but it occasionally throws up some hot theropod content instead:
Reviewer 2
boosted
Reviewer 2
boosted
#California in the 21st century:
Reviewer 2
boosted
I would tell you that you should boycott all aspects of the Super Bowl, but I know that for almost all non-Native Americans a football game is more important than their anti-racism and caring about Native/Indigenous people.
Reviewer 2
boosted
Repeating for those who missed it:
"British Channel 4 (publicly owned commercial tv, not government funded) has examined “confidential Israeli documents” regarding #Israel’s claim that #UNRWA staff were involved in the #Oct7 attacks.
The network reports Israel has “provided no evidence” in its charges against UNRWA personnel."
Zero evidence. That's all it took for US-Satrap Nations to starve more #Gaza #Palestinians and deprive them of aid. A complete fabrication that UN workers were #Hamas.
Said the scientist who sadly illustrated the point ― his exceptional contributions to the science of evolutionary biology, and to the public awareness both of its findings and of its potential political misuses, counterbalanced by the damage he did to honest scientific debate by dogmatic strawman gaslighting ― misrepresenting the arguments underlain by the theoretical viewpoints he didn't like and likely never fully understood, by systematically overstating the political implications he saw in and occasionally read into them.
Context:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/01/14/confusion-over-evolution-an-exchange/
Reviewer 2
boosted
@Melpomene@erisly.social https://qoto.org/@olives/111884417729866558
As I kind of wrote there, though after you posted that lol, Facebook almost seems to fancy themselves as some sort of state.
They have "policy documents" which are like "laws" (though, it wouldn't surprise me, if these weren't completely open to the public). A "fake court" (the "oversight board") which hands down "judgements". Probably a "profession" of people who cook up "policy documents". And probably, contractors (outsourcing has it's own problems, one they might not understand the culture, two don't shake the boat), who execute it.
I really think this whole thing with platforms has gone way too far. I wonder whether companies like Facebook which are so big and try to be so many things should even exist. Facebook does video, Facebook does groups, Facebook does "family networks", those web developer / marketer facing services where they track you on unrelated sites so as to make the entire Internet "likeable" or for marketing, Facebook does Instagram, Facebook does Whatsapp (Whatsapp is better, although even there, there are shenanigans like not encrypting the metadata). It's not even really about intermediary liability.
I also wonder whether platforms haven't coddled these QAnon type people too much. It's strange when they have a stringent standard in one area, then manipulating media to make it look like someone (in this case, the president) is some sort of predator is alright. I understand the argument that "they can never make everyone happy" and that "moderation is hard" but it feels strange.
Even there, though, again, I think platforms like this shouldn't really exist.
Gofundme for the survivors of the Israel-aligned chemical weapons terror attack on Columbia University students
https://www.gofundme.com/f/grieving-cu-community-members-need-your-support
From X/itslaylas: "medical bills are coming in for students that were attacked. students are facing hospital bills in the thousands. Columbia has offered no financial support. Please share this gofundme & donate if you can."
Reviewer 2
boosted
Anarchist Library: **CrimethInc. - Days of War, Nights of Love**
"Author: CrimethInc. - Title: Days of War, Nights of Love - Subtitle: Crimethink for Beginners - Date: 2011 - Source: <cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/books/days-of-war-nights-of-love/days-of-war-nights-of-love_screen_single_page_view.pdf> eclipse the past Warning: this book will not save your life Today there is a booming discontent industry, consisting of entrepreneurs who cash in on your misery by selling you products that describe and decry it. Thus the exchange economy finds…"
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-days-of-war-nights-of-love?v=1707197768
Reviewer 2
boosted
Leave your phone at home when you go to protests OR use a burner.
Also see:
"Meet Jack.: Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data..." A powerpoint presentation by the #ACLU. His prospective employer even manage to find out about Jack's drinking habits, his girl on the side, AND his #union activities... https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-tracking/meet-jack?redirect=meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-all-location-data #DomesticSurveillance #DomesticSpying #Surveillance #OrwellWasRight #LocationData #LicensePlateReaders
Reviewer 2
boosted
Such wisdom as this:
“When the *liberal* discourse is ‘actually our guy is deporting brown people in record numbers, so there’ you really gotta ask yourself if beating fascism is in fact a priority. The idea that giving voters soft-fash policies is a strategy for sidelining fascists not only is historically illiterate but also deeply misunderstands the nature of doing #politics as a task of effectuation and world-making. A mistake that literally no fascist has ever made.”
Reviewer 2
boosted
@Radical_EgoCom I'd just like to note that atheists from a predominantly Christian background (enculturated or actually ex-believers) are not the same as atheists who are former members of other religious communities. It varies depeding on the type of god(s) you disbelieve in. So for example ex-Christian atheists are more likely to buy the whole singularity/mind uploading riff than ex-Jewish atheists (because no afterlife).
Reviewer 2
boosted
@shadowsonawall @RD4Anarchy @CatDragon @Radical_EgoCom @graphite
Yes, which is - as I said before - why it's necessary to not have power lying around for harmful people to grab.
People like Putin, Trump, Biden, Netanyahu, Kim, Modi, Erdogan, Orban, Milosevic, and many others: there will always be such people, and they will always try to reach the highest office they can in order to do as much harm as they can. You may notice that all attempts to reserve office to only nice people have failed. Even New Zealand recently elected a white supremacist young-Earth creationist.
This being the case, giving power to such offices is like leaving a loaded gun around in a childrens' creche for the kids to play with, and saying "but sometimes there are nice people elected too" is like pointing to the days when a kid doesn't shoot another kid by mistake and saying that the gun may be fine.
Relying on people to help one another in the absence of a state isn't naive: yes, it's less effective at constructing roads, but it also results in fewer taxpayer-sponsored bombs being used to murder children of the wrong skin colour. Many people happen to think that the latter is important.
Reviewer 2
boosted
@thetechtutor@me.dm @alper @nicholas_saunders@mastodon.social @aral @RD4Anarchy
People who talk about “tribal warfare” generally lack any meaningful knowledge about how people in tribal societies engage in conflict. They point to solidly modern, solidly state conflicts and call them “tribal” because they think it’s a pejorative that conveys racialized primitiveness.
Reviewer 2
boosted
Just a reminder that there is such a thing as anarchism, which is to say, opposition to all forms of oppressive power—there is such a thing as capitalism, which is to say, a system in which a few people accumulate oppressive power over everyone else through a process of market competition—but there is no such thing as "anarcho"-capitalism, whatever the Wall Street Journal or some wingnut capitalist in Argentina might have you believe.
Reviewer 2
boosted
Research proposal written entirely in #Cree #language receives federal funding
A Faculty of #SocialWork research funding proposal written entirely in nêhiyawewin, the Cree language, has been approved for funding by the #SocialSciences and #Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to demonstrate their commitment to supporting #Indigenous languages in government-funded opportunities. This is the first proposal submitted exclusively in an Indigenous language to be funded by a federal funding agency. #science #Canada #IndigenousPeoples
Theological noncognitivist / igtheist - which from my POV is a stronger position than atheism. Theist, agnostic, and atheist positions all imply there's a concept, "God", which is clear enough to refer to a potential something "out there", whose existence a person can accept, reject, or be unsure about. Meanwhile igtheism holds that the concept is so unintelligible that any statements about it are nonsense.
Yes. I'd imagine, too, that these biases are as or more damaging against groups of people who can rarely make it to the Internet, and whose marginality does not command as attention in Vox, The Week, or The Atlantic - migrants, refugees, unhoused, agricultural workers, the poorer segments of the working classes in general - making sure much of the online public remains barely aware even of their existence, let alone their lived experience.
For anyone who thinks social media offers a level playing field for creators: Algorithms and content moderation are frequently biased against consu...
Científico antinómico
Joined Feb 2024
