Reviewer 2 @reviewer2@qoto.org

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

#anarchism #bot

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

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.”

@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).

@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.

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.

https://crimethinc.com/podcasts/the-ex-worker/episodes/18

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

https://www.ucalgary.ca/news/research-proposal-written-entirely-cree-language-receives-federal-funding

Repost with alt text (thank you, @erty!)

It was said that Charlie Chaplin was the only person in Hollywood Albert Einstein wanted to meet. In 1931, he got his chance to talk to the actor at the premiere of the film 'City Lights'.

"What I most admire about your art, is your universality," Einstein said to Chaplin. "You don’t say a word, yet the world understands you!"

"True. But your glory is even greater!" he told the physicist. "The whole world admires you, even though they don’t understand a word of what you say."

via @NobelPrize

For anyone who thinks social media offers a level playing field for creators:

Algorithms and content moderation are frequently biased against consumers & creators who are black, LGBT+ or disabled.

https://theweek.com/briefing/1023338/algorithm-ai-discrimination

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/10/20893258/youtube-lgbtq-censorship-demonetization-nerd-city-algorithm-report

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/algorithmic-bias-especially-dangerous-teens/616793/

@mos_8502

My girlfriend's kid considered the possibility for a time that he was trans, and identified as female for a few weeks. Eventually he decided that he wasn't trans; so be it.

Here's what I'm seeing in that: it's not like GenZ admits to being trans only after they have no choice; they are accepting enough of the possibility that they explore it. Sometimes, like my girlfriend's kid, they'll decide that they aren't trans at all; but on the other hand, those kids who actually ARE trans will find a great deal of acceptance is already there for them, no battle required. Not everywhere in America, not every family, but a lot of them and more and more by the day.

I grew up GenX and I'm cishet. The thing is, in GenX days, there was enough pressure to be cishet that you WERE cishet unless you absolutely could not be. That's not how this should work. People should be free to explore without shame, discover who they actually are. I feel very comfortable as cishet, but I can't deny the possibility that it was simply so hammered into me that any non-cishet tendencies I otherwise might have had are no more.

One other random rambling thought: one thing we should prepare for, is the possibility of fluidity. Like, people may go through periods of being cishet but then they're gay or lesbian; or they may identify as male but then as female; and it's not a matter of rejecting identity, so much as fluidity is part of their experience. Keep an eye open for that and be accepting when you see it, because I suspect we're going to collectively realize it's a thing.

We all admire Amsterdam for having the vision to replace car infrastructure with bike infrastructure. We see the positive uplift in small business activity, and livability. 🙂👍🏿

Now imagine doing that in reverse. Replace relatively safely walkable and bikeable infrastructure with car infrastructure. In fact, put in freeways. Demolish entire thriving wealthy neighborhoods with freeways that don't serve the neighborhood.🙃

That's what we did to Black folk. That's how we destroyed Black wealth.

So take this post about twitter bots from @jsrailton one step further:
https://mastodon.social/@jsrailton/111869872361186177

Whats in it for the people running the bots?

Since twitters on-platform monetization is much lower than the cost of the bots, its not that.

This is bot seeding - you cant just stroll up brand new with a thousand new accounts, thats way too easy to detect and filter. You need to prepare the bots long beforehand, give them lots of organic-seeming activity, get them some algorithmic placement.

In other words, this is what an actively adversarial information platform looks like: the constant manufacture of informational weapons in plain view. These bots are prepped and ready to be deployed whenever a war needs to be sold, an election swung, a story drowned out, and so on. Bots dont exist because twitter is bad at moderation, they exist because it's extremely lucrative to rent bots to manufacture consent (also counting state actors, where profit and power are hard to disentangle).

In addition to the perverse incentive @jsrailton points to re: twitter not wanting to ban the paying bot customers, bots on twitter is also a symptom of its status as a theater of informational warfare, and how that is now core to its profit model.

When a government attempts to discredit The Hague, it's a sign something has gone terribly wrong in that country. My latest:

#cartoon #comic #politics #war #humanrights #gaza