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Last Notes

2026-10-06 08:27:43 UTC

A couple of billion years ago, cyanobacteria evolved the ability to photosynthesize. Suddenly they could turn the abundant atmospheric C02 into carbon for replicating themselves. The only side effect was the release of oxygen.
It was a monumental success, but it ended up turning Earth's C02 centered atmosphere into an Oxygen centered one, leading to what may have been the first great extinction event. Cyanobacteria still exist, but they are no longer the dominant life on Earth.
Some things that thrive in one environment also change that environment such that they destroy the resource they need to thrive. We're seeing this today with #LLMs They were only possible to create given massive amounts of clean human-generated content. As they dump their memetic effluent back into the data they feed from, they produce statistical distortions that degrade models trained on the same data. Like the cyanobacteria, they poison the air they breathe.
I encourage everyone to think in terms of systems, not simply components. Because, though this lens, it becomes obvious that some systems include within themselves the logic of their own collapse. And, like a Greek tragedy, it is often precisely a system's strength that leads to its collapse.

2026-10-02 07:02:50 UTC

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Economically, kids cost so much money and are so much work. The majority of that work benefits society, not the parents. The emotional rewards all exist outside of capitalism, and parallel the emotional rewards of other pro-social behaviors, like mutual aid, that capitalism can't quantify (and thus can't comprehend).

2026-10-02 06:58:05 UTC

Capitalists: "People are driven by greed. They won't work without some kind of personal incentive, like money."
Ok, cool, but do you know what "a baby" is?

2026-09-24 04:37:18 UTC

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Borders are the worst idea humanity has ever come up with. People fucking move all the time. That's *normal* and has been throughout human history. Borders don't just promote genocide, as in the case of Syria/Turkey or Ethiopia. They *are* genocide. There are and have been migratory people. That's just one of the (absolutely fucking legitimate) strategies of human survival. Borders destroy migratory cultures.
From the US and ICE, to AfD and all the rest of the European far right bullshit, to Turkey's incursions into Syria, to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's all the same shit over and over again because of these fucking imaginary lines that kill so many people.

2026-09-24 04:27:14 UTC

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There is also a racist approach to African and Middle Eastern politics that paints everything as "ethnic conflict" with the implications that Europe "has evolved past that." But European borders are also just imaginary lines drawn randomly through diverse areas. Europe is far more ethnically diverse than those lines let on, and this still bleeds through all the time. European antisemitism and discrimination against Roma people is a continued manifestation of this.
The rise of the far right in Europe is just one more example of how *nations never solved this problem* and continue to fail to solve it. The entire concept of nations will continue to cause conflict everywhere. They are a new idea, and ultimately a really bad one. The last two centuries of oppression and genocide should be enough, but here we are still trying for some reason.
This racist lens tries to make us believe conflicts like these are a different problem, but it's all the same problem. The rise of AfD in Germany and Abiy's genocide in Tigray are connected at the root of what a nation is as a sociopolitical entity. There are people who want to make this conflict alien, but it couldn't be more familiar to anyone paying attention.

2026-09-24 04:13:55 UTC

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Please take everything I'm saying with a huge grain of salt. I'm sort of following things, but I don't have a history in the region. Follow local folks to get much better info.

2026-09-24 04:12:18 UTC

RE: https://dair-community.social/@ZekuZelalem/117320888712641893
There's a bit of context behind this that's worth being aware of, and I'll do my best to explain it second (or third) hand. Abiy Ahmed has been the prime minister of Ethiopia since 2019. He was quite popular initially, but has held on to power for quite a while and has been called out for authoritarian tendencies.
His party, the Prosperity Party, is a liberal party that has privatized parts of the economy and is trying to dismantle ethnic federalism. This type of "modernization" is obviously supported by neoliberal forces around the world, especially since he took over from the ethno nationalist ML TPLF.
The TPLF was also authoritarian, brutal, and anti-democratic, as one would expect from an ML organization. Part of Abiy's popularity came from opposition to the TPLF. But more recently, but his forces also carried out genocide in Tigray during that war in 2022 (after his Nobel Peace Prize).
Part of the opposition to his modernization is that ending ethnic federalism would weaken the power of older ethnic structures. This could be seen as similar in some ways to conflicts across Europe in from 1848 through to the early 1900's and in the Balkans after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The connection between ethnicity and nationality has never really stopped causing problems. Liberalism is usually connected to the domination of one ethnic group into a singular national identity. This flows from the French Revolution, through the Russian revolution, and into both the Ethnic ML exported by Communist Russia as part of their attempts to weaken European capitalism and (via both American Colonial Nationalism and the French Revolution) into the Neoliberalism promoted by the US and European powers as a counter.
Ethiopia is a multiethnic country. Unfortunately the logic of the state (liberal or communist) tends to destroy these ethnic identities through a combination of ethnic cleansing, appropriation, and (often forced) integration.
Some of the conflict here is coming out of the tension between a national identity and ethnic identity, especially in relation to Tigray and Amhara, as well as the continued pressure of economic liberalization, and centralization vs federalization.
The point is that it's actually quite a bit more complicated than it may be presented as, especially outside of the religion. European interests may align with Abiy, and present him as a "modernizing force." Addis is one of the centers of the African Union. Meanwhile, other countries have their own interests in stoking this conflict. China, Turkey, the UAE, and Iran all sell drones to the Federal government. Eretria has an interest in creating a buffer zone to keep Ethiopia from seizing a port city from them. Sudan is involved, and I don't have the local political depth to know why.
Various groups will try to point to one group or another as the "good guy/bad guy" but it's definitely not that simple. It's just kind of tragic for everyone. I hope Ethiopian people find peace and freedom.
My hope is that Ethiopia will develop something like Democratic Confederalism that resolves these conflicts and tensions without wiping out the unique identities of the peoples who make up Ethiopia.
#note1nme…yke8

2026-09-20 08:40:49 UTC

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https://crimethinc.com/2026/08/27/us-government-designates-host-of-noblogsorg-a-global-terrorist

2026-09-20 05:47:29 UTC

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Hex/117301600744264832
If you were wondering why noblogs got taken offline...
#note1z84…0ts4

2026-09-20 04:59:42 UTC

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And maybe it's time to really think about Sean Swain's proposal for a Fragger Support Fund (which, by the way, is now only in the way back machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20260910070413/https://seanswain.noblogs.org/2017/04/proposal-for-a-fragger-support-fund/

2026-09-20 04:53:16 UTC

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And the answer will be "fine" as long as "the military" is thought of as a block that is treated as an enemy of the left. In the Russian case, leftists intentionally joined the military to radicalize units. In the German case, conscription meant that leftists ended up in the military radicalizing people.
The US is different, intentionally. Vietnam changed a lot. While some people resisted the draft, others rolled hand grenades into their officers' tents. Fragging commanders was a huge problem. After the end of the war, the US military adapted by ending the draft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging
The US military works hard to brain wash recruits, yes. There are *a lot* of controls in place to minimize the probability of the type of revolt that has been part of other revolutions. One of those is "merit based" promotion. But, as we know from the Vietnam War, evrn that breaks down.
And it's easy to forget, or ignore, but the military *does* sometimes radicalize people or people radicalize themselves in response to their experiences in service. Smedley Butler is perhaps one of the more interesting examples, but there have been plenty. Aaron Bushnell should be at the top of your mind, as should Chelsea Manning (and perhaps others like Reality Winner).
Lots of people join the military for reasons other than patriotism, and some of those who join because of patriotism see what the US really is as part of their service. Support our vet comrades. Support those doing the work of trying to radicalize service members. Keep an open mind when talking to folks in the military today. Welcome comrades who are still in the military and have come to realize what's happened. And, most importantly, listen to those who have served to understand other things you can do to support service members who are in the process of rejecting their indoctrination.

2026-09-20 04:21:47 UTC

RE: https://newsie.social/@TheConversationUS/117301177720795183
Mutiny in the Army and Navy has been a key element of historical revolutions, most notably the Russian and German ones.
The military is largely drawn from marginalized people but largely commanded by privileged people who could go to officer school. Upward mobility, or at least the illusion of it, has been a critical part of maintaining control in militaries around the world.
This, on top of everything else, is a pretty bold move. We'll see how it plays out.
#note1ypc…2dn6

2026-09-17 14:36:50 UTC

RE: https://social.seattle.wa.us/@divestspd/117284498575165892
Which again, is the reason cops exist. In the North, they developed to be a publicly funded private army of guards for capitalists who wanted to externalize the cost of maintaining massive wealth disparity through violence. (In the south they came from the slave patrols.)
#note1vuj…va29

2026-09-12 10:24:56 UTC

Let's actually talk about the "AI destroying the world" thing. One specific apocalypse scenario is the "paperclip maximizer" problem. The scenario goes that a super intelligence is tasked with maximizing the number of paperclips produced by a company. Because of a thing called "instrumental convergence," the AI kills all humans to prevent them from shutting it down, then it destroys everything else strip mining the Earth, etc.
Basically, the intelligence doesn't understand the actual goal of helping people hold paper together and therefore calculates intermediate goals that violate the *implicit* goal in order to fulfill the *explicit* goal.
The thing is, that's just capitalism. The whole AI scam is an example of this, where maximization of quarterly profit is an explicit goal and "destroying human civilization and most life on Earth through climate change" is a side effect of the "build as many datacenters as possible" subgoal.
Capitalism has been an apocalypse manifesting malicious intelligence since we figured out that burning fossil fuels changes the climate, back in 1824.

2026-09-09 07:12:12 UTC

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The other big factor here is the massive centralization of noblogs. There's a huge single target that they could choose. That single target was all anarchist. There was essentially no collateral damage. Half of the anarchist internet went offline, and practically no one else even noticed.
This is a *huge* problem...

2026-09-09 07:09:39 UTC

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I want to give a better write up, but I'm a bit short on time so I'm gonna just braindump as fast as I can.
The designated reason for adding A/I to the FTO list is material support of the PKK. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization in the US. However flimsy, this worked.
We all know they targeted noblogs because it hosts antifascist content. They said as much. But they found a loophole that let them attack it. They didn't officially say "we're shutting down antifascist content." They officially said, "we're shutting down an organization that supports a known terrorist group." There's a huge difference.
We all know it's a scam, but the fact that they needed cover is critical. It shows us where we *actually* are right now....

2026-09-09 07:04:48 UTC

Like a lot of other folks, I'll be trying to figure out how to move some #noblogs content somewhere else.
In all the frenzy, we've talked about how the left is being targeted. That's true, but it's also important to understand exactly how they got away with attacking A/I...
#USPol

2026-08-28 20:48:21 UTC

You cannot make this shit up. #NotTheOnion
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/28/us/milo-yiannopoulos-detained-by-ice

2026-08-27 14:00:00 UTC

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from a security perspective, I think there's a lot of work to do here. But I think it's a good model to build on.

2026-08-27 08:32:56 UTC

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@franklinlopez/117162931383348078
And while you're building those collectives, don't re-invent the wheel. Federations like Co-op Cloud (https://coopcloud.tech/) make it easier to share the burden of devops and security management.
Small collectives can struggle to find specialized skills like security engineers.
Meanwhile, large collectives become easier for governments to target. Federations of small collectives are the way to go.
#note1w93…049y

2026-07-29 17:35:18 UTC

We've reached some kind of dystopia singularity, where you can't write dystopian fiction anymore because things are worse than the society you had imagined by the time you finish fleshing out the idea.

2026-07-28 21:04:14 UTC

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@drwhax/116997238394916522
This can also be done with open weight models run locally.
#note1uux…fcu4

2026-07-27 16:58:44 UTC

If you want to know what Rubio is trying to do, go listen to the Revolutions podcast on 1848. Metternich built a conspiracy of kings that persecuted Liberals in order to protect European empires against revolution. It failed, of course, but he was able to hold things down (right until it all blew up in his face). The strategy was essentially mass surveillance, censorship, and general Draconian repressieve bullshit.
Rubio is trying to slap together an actual international conspiracy of governments to stomp on the face of humanity forever, and his opening offer is off-brand 70's fear mongering that no one takes seriously.
He may well be right, in some ways. The thing he calls "civilization" is white supremacist patriarchal Christian nationalism, modeled loosely on Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, and Putin's Russia. Yeah, "the left" is a *huge* threat to that type of shit. In fact, we always win.
But Rubio is Dollar Tree Metternich, and he's not trying to stop a liberal revolution near the birth of liberalism. He's trying to stop a leftist revolution that's been refining itself now against these same tactics for hundreds of years.
We already have the playbook he's using (poorly). It's just funny that the famous Marx quote about history repeating, "the first as tragedy, then as farce," is so applicable to this Rubio as he rails against the laughable boogyman of "Marxism."

2026-07-25 16:26:31 UTC

Move slow and fix things.

2026-07-24 07:52:17 UTC

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that's not actually true though. Cars have to be run pretty regularly or they break down much faster. Fuel stabilizer exists and it exists for a reason.
https://www.autozone.com/diy/performance-chemicals/what-fuel-stabilizer-is-and-how-to-use-it
So yeah, you actually do need to "feed it when you're not using it." But the thing you're feeding it doesn't put carbon into the ground in the form of roots, it puts carbon into the air.

2026-07-18 15:50:58 UTC

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Some old white dude decided to jump all over yelling "Ackchyually, no one forced you to buy a car!!", and I'm just blocking. This shit is so easy to research. Like, yeah, people were forced to buy a car by minimum parking zoning that spread out cities, mass transit being (very intentionally) destroyed, and giant cars that murder people. There are actual laws that very intentionally made things worse, and then there's the intentionally created prisoner's dilemma of ever expanding car sizes.
This shit is extremely easy to research. At this point I'm just assuming it's trolls or the type of people who would be like "but no one has *proved* smoking causes cancer" back in the 90's. Yeah, that was a thing, and they sounded *just fucking like these people today.*

2026-07-18 14:11:04 UTC

I keep seeing the "cars replaced horses" thing related to "AI."
People keep comparing "AI" to cars (positively) without thinking about the fact that cars were forced on people (AAA bought up and destroyed tram lines, there were massive protests, etc), and are the primary driver of climate change that is currently on track to make complex human society impossible. Meanwhile, cities that weren't destroyed for cars, or that have reversed most of the damage, are some of the most desirable places to live.
Maybe we could take the car analogy as a warning. Maybe it could be a reminder to think about how forcing technology on people against their will can reshape society in a profoundly negative way.
The answer for cities has been to right-size transit. Eliminate cars wherever possible, maintain emergency vehicles and mobility aids, and find more efficient alternatives (bikes, trams, metros, and trains) where possible. I feel as though we can extrapolate from the metaphor.
We do not have to repeat the mistake of reshaping society around a single, oversimplified, solution in order to benefit a tiny minority. Perhaps we can actually choose the right technologies based on use cases, rather than hype or dogma.
Cars didn't replace horses. Cars replaced walkable cities, tram lines and mass transit, and children playing in the streets.
"Cars replaced horses" to the benefit of a small group of elite men, at tremendous cost to literally everyone else. When people say, "AI is the new 'cars replacing horses'" they are saying something very specific about their privilege and intentions.

2026-07-13 19:09:39 UTC

RE: https://todon.eu/@CrimethInc/116913952636548872
When this specific phase of history is over, and, perhaps, we've turned NWDC into some artist space like Seattle's Inscape, we'll put a statue of Willem in the center of the garden where those buses once were. It's not something he'd probably have liked much, but memorials aren't for the dead. They're for the living, to help us remember what to aspire to.
#note1f4s…ssjw

2026-07-09 18:59:57 UTC

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I lived in the rural US. People with physical disabilities that make them unable to drive often just have to hide because specialized cars are too expensive. You don't know about them, because car based society keeps them locked up in their houses.
But here in the Netherlands, there are so many more people of all different abilities because people can use mobility devices in the bike lanes and the bike lanes are everywhere. More people can participate in society. There are so many more older people just existing because they aren't forced to wait for someone to drive them around. There are so many more kids who don't need to be driven everywhere.

2026-07-09 18:55:02 UTC

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I think folks really underestimate the number of people who can't or shouldn't drive because of some "disability" or other. ADHD is definitely a disqualifier. I should absolutely never have driven, and I'm glad I don't have to now. But people never hesitate to pull out the, "but what about disabled people" card whenever someone suggests building a world that allows people to move safely *outside of a car.*
But even if you're "perfectly" neurotypical, able bodied, have good vision, etc, you still might have a kid some time. Now you're spending years with massive sleep deprivation, which can impair you just like 0.8 blood alcohol. But yeah, it's fine for parents to just die and kill for... Uh ... To keep this dystopia going I guess.
And speaking of blood alcohol, there are just a lot of people who have to drive if they want to go to a bar. Rural shit exists. And sure, it's bad judgement to drink and drive but maybe it's also bad judgement to build a society where people have to drive somewhere that there's drinking if they want to socialize.
There are just *so* many problems with a car based society. I mean, I didn't even get into the whole "car seats for kids just exist to maintain the illusion of safety" thing. It's all so fucked.
Yeah, y'all are not anywhere near alone.

2026-07-09 16:51:22 UTC

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Humans should not operate cars. They are too dangerous. But it's been so normalized that everyone thinks they just have the inalienable right to fling their murder box around everyone else.

2026-07-09 16:48:56 UTC

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Like, actually fuck cars. They have always been bad for everyone. They have been Orwellian shit for a long time, but it's always the rest of us that suffer.
I actually think this is a good wake up call. These things will *always* be a problem. Cars being perfect for controlling people is a geometry problem. The technical element just makes the rest easier.

2026-07-09 16:45:15 UTC

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/116890719090826544
Maybe it's time to build society in a way that doesn't require you use giant, people crushing, mobile surveillance units that require legal documentation to operate, every time you want to go get milk.
#note1jz8…ajf6

2026-07-02 21:34:04 UTC

The thing about training an #LLM on human culture and then renting that culture back isn't that it's "Intellectual Property Theft." There's nothing wrong with sharing. There is something wrong with framing LLMs as piracy. That's a completely different concept.
When a powerful group of people takes the writing, the art, the music, various parts of a culture and then make some bland reproduction that lacks all the meaning and essence in the original, then those powerful people profit off that mess while the people who made the original stuff are erased, marginalized, and made to suffer, there is a different term for that.
The term everyone is looking for is "appropriation."
I'm not saying this is the same as other forms of cultural appropriation, but there are definitely enough shared elements that we should revisit that conversation. Perhaps some folks who thought the idea was silly when the idea first came up may feel differently now.

2026-06-07 04:19:04 UTC

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The good side of this is that there's a hijack-able data stream that anyone can use to poison LLM training sets, and they can't do shit because it's on *your* network.

2026-06-07 04:08:28 UTC

But if *I* hijack *their* devices it's a "felony."
https://blog.includesecurity.com/2026/06/the-smart-tv-in-your-livingroom-is-a-node-in-the-aiscraping-economy/

2026-06-03 08:06:06 UTC

The thing I love about computers is that I can tell you basically anything about how a computer works, not because I know everything but because I know how to figure it out. I can walk you, over the course of an hour, two, there, maybe more, though every step of typing something into a web form, from the electrical signals that get turned into digital via an ADC, to the USB controller memory, to the kernel driver, to user space, through the application stack, back down to the kernel, to the network driver, through routers, up the server stack, TCP/IP, key exchanges, etc.
I don't mean I have the time to dig into these things. I used to, and it was fun. I've given more than my fair share of interviews talking though variations of this. What I'm talking about isn't pure knowledge, but that, given relatively simple theory, and the right tools, every action of a computer can be understood down to the limits of physics.
The thing I hate about #LLMs is that take something comprehensible and make it something almost completely opaque. Even with a solid understanding of the theory, literally no one understands what's happening. That is shit. It makes playing with technology not fun anymore. The way in which companies are making things even more opaque by running stuff in the cloud is everything I hated about closed source on steroids.

2026-06-02 06:56:02 UTC

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I'm glad old tech is back. I really missed being able to bypass auth by clicking "cancel" and knocking people offline with a single packet. I'm excited to see how Meta and Microsoft fulfil my nostalgia for easy bugs, but somehow with new technology. It's really a great mashup of the old and the new.

2026-05-23 19:27:34 UTC

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I *think* that 5 days is too short of a time for me to have accidentally "torment nexus" posted that shit into existence, but wow is it creepy as fuck to see.

2026-05-23 19:25:50 UTC

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https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/03/12/ai-companies-try-to-pay-staff-in-ai-tokens-not-money/

2026-05-23 19:25:39 UTC

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Hex/116175474681693693
Oh yeah, and this happened (or was happening when I talked about it) and got reported on a few days later...
#note1t2a…kshx

2026-05-19 07:15:30 UTC

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It's worth nothing that oil, the dominant funder of both political parties, the industry that ultimately maintains veto power over both parties political platforms, is not profitable without massive state investment. Roads, parking, and infrastructure grants, all put money in the pockets of the industry that is destroying the planet. That money then comes right back into the political sphere to control the frame of debate around climate change and how to address it.

2026-05-19 07:09:57 UTC

Logistics in the technical sense (part of supply chain management) is a subset of logistics in the vernacular sense ("the handling of the details of an operation"). You can explore this second and more general sense, and thereby build an understanding of the first and more technical sense, by iteratively asking the question, "how does one make that happen" and follow questions from there.
A big part of organizing is figuring out the (vernacular) logistics (and helping others figure it out). You want to organize a seed swap? Ok. How does one make that happen? Well, you need seeds, people, a place, and perhaps a time. How does one make that happen? You can forage seeds or you can buy seeds for a garden and swap extras. How do you get people to come? Well, figure out where you want people to come from and choose an accessible place. What's the easiest thing to do? Get people from your neighborhood. How does one make that happen? Well, maybe put up flyers. How does one make that happen? Well, print them on your printer if you have one, or at a library, then go post them up. Etc.
Keep asking questions until you either find a roadblock that you can't find a way around, or you find things you can do yourself (one of those things you can do yourself is asking friends to help).
If you practice the exercise of thinking about how things happen, you can start to find things that you can do yourself. You can start to understand what exists now, and you can imagine what's possible. By thinking about logistics, you can figure out how to replace things when they collapse or are dismantled. You can also identify things that can't easily be replaced, and try to figure out alternatives.
This practice is good for figuring out how to build, but it can also be a valuable practice for figuring out how to resist. Concentration camps and ethnic cleansing also require logistics. Mass displacement means moving people. How does one do that? People are generally going to be moved in planes or buses. How does one do that? Well, people get loaded on to planes or buses in specific places. Planes and buses need fuel. Planes are fueled at their airports, which may well be the same places where people are loaded on to them. There is a fuel depo and a fuel truck that makes flying people out of a specific place possible. How does the fuel get to that fuel depo? Well, that fuel is probably also delivered by truck. Someone drives those trucks. Someone fuels those planes. Someone clears the planes for takeoff. Someone fuels those busses. Someone drives those busses. And so on.
Logistics networks can be highly complex. The more complex the operation, the more possible points of failure and more possible points where pressure can be applied, where operations can be disrupted. Ethnic cleansing is a complicated operation. The logistics of disrupting complicated things tend to be much less complicated than the logistics of the complicated things themselves.
The Right has exploited this fact for a long time. Centralized social services are logistically complex. Public infrastructure is logistically complex. By destroying these things, they can loot public resources by privatizing the infrastructure and functionality.
But the things that support the Right are even more logistically complex. Oil, cars, AI data centers, internal paramilitary, these are extremely complicated and fragile. There are numerous pressure points, all of which can respond to numerous strategies.
If we want to win, we should reduce the influence of politics over the things we care about. We should focus on building distributed mutual aid networks that don't rely on state funding and aren't subject to the whims of politicians. This is also known as "dual power." That is, creating counter-institutions outside of the dominant political system. The Right already does this in the form of churches and corporations.
As we reduce our complexity, we can then press our complexity advantage against the things for which the Right *needs* the state: the apparatus of violence needed to maintain capital and enforce the dominant order.

2026-05-18 20:55:27 UTC

I'd like to remind anyone calling for a new Neurenberg Tribunal that the original one was only necessary because Germans didn't respond appropriately to the evil shit Nazis were doing, when they were doing it. The tribunals essentially asserted that the German people would have been justified in using any force necessary to stop the Nazis, and that all who didn't try to use such force were complicit.
Sit with that for a bit and ponder the implications.

2026-05-17 07:17:41 UTC

RE: https://mefi.social/@MissConstrue/116587674238145868
Motohegemony requires a very specific set of conditions to exist. It relies on an incredibly complex supply chain, and a fragile framework of political and financial support. Leaders have been largely competent (though, perhaps, malevolent), and have prioritized systemic stability over all else.
The conditions that made that system viable have collapsed. Your best bet to avoid being consumed by that collapse is to fight for bike infrastructure and mass transit, and to abandon cars as much as possible.
You will have to adapt to a life without cars. There is no question of "if" that will be necessary, but "under what conditions." Will you choose the time, or will the time be chosen for you?

2026-05-14 20:37:53 UTC

LLMs can do a lot of the work people are tasked with doing on a regular basis, because a lot of the work people do is bullshit. The majority of what we do isn't to achieve any goal, it's a way to distribute just enough wealth to keep things calm while keeping us all too busy to actually make things better.
We aren't paid to make stuff or do things. We're paid not to riot. Elites used to know that. The fact that they've forgotten how the machine works is evident in its current implosion, and will only become more obvious as they forget the one thing that actually keeps them safe.

2026-04-28 12:33:28 UTC

#LifeHack: if you have grease on your hands (from working on a bike or a car) and you don't have any good pumice soap, you can use table salt. A table spoon of table salt or so works well as an abrasive.
I used some dish soap with the salt and it took some stubborn grease from my bike off my hands.

2026-04-16 20:52:27 UTC

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Propaganda of the deed generally does the opposite of what it's supposed to do: it alienates rather than activates, destroying the movement it comes from. Until it doesn't. Until it actually sparks a revolution.
But there is a prerequisite for a successful revolution. That is an alternative system to pivot into as the old one collapses. That alternative is *far more dangerous* than any one-off action, up to and including literally killing a king or an emperor.
People will eventually rise up. That's just a matter of time. The question is what's left after everything gets burned down. That's a far more important question than, "is it happening?" It's happening (sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly), what's next?
Hierarchy manifests complexity beyond its ability to manage. We're seeing that now, we will see it more. Distributed authority is more stable. Build a distributed society within the burned out warehouse of the hierarchical one.

2026-04-16 20:05:20 UTC

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news/116415897425912438
Imagine the social infrastructure it would take to make this type of action sustainable. Imagine someone live streaming Mario Party, and officials being unable to stop it.
I don't advocate violence. But I do advocate building the social infrastructure that would make one-sided class war impossible.
The system can absorb some number of one-off actions. The system cannot absorb continuous action. Figure out the logistics necessary to make continuous action viable, and build *that.*
If you are mad, organize. This is the time.
#note1wkl…lrwy

2026-04-14 17:19:16 UTC

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cheers to the first person to get a raise and promotion by prompt injection.

2026-04-01 08:45:48 UTC

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Just like... imagine for a second that you're a former billionaire and every day you have to sit through someone telling you a long story about all the suffering you caused them, or their family, or their community, in order to get food.
Like, as a billionaire, you don't even have the first clue how to take care of yourself so you are *completely* dependent on other people to do *everything* for you... and the only people who will do anything for you are all the people you hurt, in exchange for you sitting and listening to *all of it.*
Yeah, fuck the guillotine. I want justice.

2026-04-01 08:33:11 UTC

"Wake me up when the guillotines come out." Yeah, I have some things to say about that.
Please, take a seat.
https://hexmhell.writeas.com/wake-me-up-when-the-guillotines-come-out
#USpol #NoKings

2026-03-31 18:30:50 UTC

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This will be over at some point. Trump is mortal, at least as far as we can tell. He's mortal and he's old. At some point he'll have had one too many aneurysms and they won't be able to Weekend At Bernie's that motherfucker around anymore. (Come to think of it, "mother" is probably not the right word.)
But what happens next? Does everyone go back to brunch and let the fash respawn? Or do we end this machine before it gets better?

2026-03-31 18:24:27 UTC

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But I would *definitely* like folks to analyze the frameworks they're working within. It's OK that it took this long to join the fight. But maybe ask yourself *why* it took so long.
What was it that others saw? Why were others able to see this coming months, or years, before you were? There have been people saying this would happen since the 70's. What information did they have that you didn't? Did you feel surprised when Trump won, each time? Why? What was missing from your analysis?
Is anything still missing?

2026-03-31 18:20:23 UTC

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I mean, I'm glad there are so many folks in the fight. A lot of the folks in Twin Cities aren't even liberals, they're Republicans who voted for Trump.
We have to have a big tent, or we won't have enough people to stop this. As much shade as I may cast on liberals through this whole thing, the last few paragraphs of what I wrote are critical.
At the end of the day, we will have walked a long road together. I don't especially care when you joined, as long as we're going the same way.

2026-03-31 18:13:35 UTC

I saw an article from The Guardian titled "I've spent a decade fighting Trump. Here are six lessons."
Unfortunately I read it. As someone who saw this coming the moment Trump came down the elevator, who started organizing hard after he won the Republican nomination, I have some notes.
https://hexmhell.writeas.com/ten-years-of-fighting-fascism
#USPol

2026-03-29 11:38:43 UTC

#NoKings is great. I know there's plenty of room for criticism, but it does present a really good opportunity to network with other people who want to do something.
That said, if your whole plan is "I'm gonna hold a sign until something changes" you're in for some really bad news.
Protesting is symbolic. You are begging people in power to (please, please, please) change things. It literally does not matter how many of you there are, they do no actually have to care. The only way to make them care is to fuck with the money.
America, like all dictatorships, runs on money. Nothing is going to change unless you interrupt the money.
While Trump is doing a pretty good job of that himself (especially with the current war), things will have to get a *lot* worse before they get better unless you are *doing something.*
#BlackOutTheSystem is one group that's trying to do something (https://www.blackoutthesystem.com/).
There are 3 things that are far more important than (almost) any protest, 3 things that force change, 3 types of direct action to that are the types of escalation we need *right now.*
#Boycott
#GeneralStrike
#TaxStrike
If your escalation path is just "let's go walk around more with signs" then it's not enough. They absolutely must include at least one, if not more, of these things...

2026-03-05 07:51:02 UTC

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There's a whole dystopian sci-fi plot prompt hidden here about a world that mirrors company stores, where everyone is paid partially in LLM tokens which they have to use for everything including work... Work, where they basically gamble the tokens away, always ending up in debt, needing to take out loans to buy tokens to then work for more tokens.
The story would be called "Sixteen Tons." Maybe I'll write it, but not unless it can be written as solarpunk instead of cyberpunk because the new rule is "don't write 'The Torment Nexus' because someone will think it's a good idea and implement it."

2026-03-05 07:41:53 UTC

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Behind the Bastards goes into this a lot in one of their Epstein series. It's definitely worth listening to.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-how-jeffrey-epstein-helped-323226341/

2026-03-05 07:39:07 UTC

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This is all, of course, completely in line with Epstein's argument for micro-transactions. Modern gaming has shifted heavily towards this pay-to-play model with drop boxes that all basically looks like gambling for kids.
https://www.thegamer.com/jeffrey-epstein-call-of-duty-microtransactions/

2026-03-05 05:47:59 UTC

Woke up from a dream with a thought about dark patterns and LLMs.
If LLMs (as a service) could be normalized and integrated into everything, as is currently in progress, the next step would be to charge tokens to pay for the interactions. After all, it's not really free. That's just the normal progression. Introduce the tech, get people hooked, then make them pay.
Great, now imagine this future state. Every interaction with a computer ends up mediated through a stochastic parrot. Congratulations, everything now has micro-transactions on steroids. Not only does everything you do with tech have micro-transactions, but every interaction with technology is gambling.

2026-02-12 21:45:55 UTC

Roman elites drank from leaded cups because it made water sweeter. Radiation was thought at one time to have healing properties, so people would add uranium to their drinking water. Glowing dishes are still a collectors item. After the discovery of x-rays, shoe stores started installing them and using them on kids feet to size shoes. Lead was added to gasoline to improve engine performance, and paint to make it whiter. We all know about asbestos and DDT.
We look back at all of this and think, "how could people have been so incompetent back then?" Some of these things caused irreparable harm in their generation, some continue to cause harm today almost 100 years later.
If you wonder that, look at the whole #LLM thing and you have your answer.

2026-02-08 03:55:30 UTC

So just in case anyone missed it, I want to spell this out for you. The point of using FPS as ICE agents is that FPS is stocked full of troops from EriK Prince's private army (now called "Academi" but formerly called "Blackwater"). This means that carrying out ethnic cleansing can dump money directly into the pockets of America's version of the Wagner Group (side from, of course GEO Group).
It also means that there can be an alternative chain of command that exists outside of official channels. ICE is already bad enough, but similar people have worked as mercenaries for a long time. Having an established chain of command over armed occupiers, one based entirely on economic incentives, one that can't be legally monitored or audited, one that's completely outside of the government, should be especially worrying.
The bit reason J6 didn't go as planned is that Erik Prince wasn't behind it. Now there are troops with experience occupying American cities who can be called directly via Erik when Trump wants to make sure he doesn't lose again. And Erik won't back out at the last minute, because he's already seen that there will be no consequences for participating in a coup... if the time comes.
Edit:
Just to be clear, this is not new news just commenting on old news.
#USPol

2026-02-01 19:15:38 UTC

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"Bridge Burner Collective" is actually a reference to something about that old as well...
https://pugetsoundanarchists.org/wp-content/uploads/burning-bridges-imposed.pdf

2026-02-01 18:58:12 UTC

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they predated divest by a few years, as best I know.
Edit: but yes, I expect there's some overlap in membership. There's definitely also a thread of continuity between the two.
There's been a long line of folks fighting this fight going back a few decades:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/man-sues-says-spd-conceals-dash-cam-videos/

2026-02-01 17:57:12 UTC

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also Solan is a fascist.
https://bridgeburners.noblogs.org/post/2020/09/28/meet-trumps-wanna-be-mike-solan/

2026-01-25 20:29:32 UTC

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100% agree.
Something something prefiguration

2026-01-25 20:09:45 UTC

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Legit though, there is actually a benefit to having places like this where we can talk without pressure to conform to the hegemony. It's useful to be able to support each other in our resistence, to feel as though we are not alone in fighting something so big. But it is also essential to take what we talk about here into the real world and *do something with it.*

2026-01-25 19:43:09 UTC

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The state has become an existential threat to humanity in multiple ways. Not only are we *all* at risk of being killed at any time by the monsterous incompetence and malice of these systems (yeah, listen to this: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-men-who-might-310407494/), but we are also slowly being killed by systems enforced and protected by these same entities.
Maybe... just maybe... it's time to think of other ways to organize ourselves.

2026-01-25 19:39:35 UTC

I explained something for a friend in a simple way, and I think it's worth paraphrasing again here.
You cannot create a system that constrains itself. Any constraint on a system must be external to the system, or that constraint can be ignored or removed. That's just how systems work. Every constitution for every country claims to do this impossible thing, a thing proven is impossible almost 100 years ago now. Gödel's loophole has been known to exist since 1947.
Every constitution in the world, every "separation of powers" and set of "checks and balances," attempts to do something which is categorically impossible. Every government is always, at best, a few steps away from authoritarianism. From this, we would then expect that governments trand towards authoritarianism. Which, of course, is what we see historically.
Constraints on power are a formality, because no real controls can possibly exist. So then democratic processes become sort of collective classifiers that try to select only people who won't plunge the country into a dictatorship. Again, because this claim of restrictions on powers is a lie (willful or ignorant, a lie reguardless) that classifier has to be correct 100% of the time (even assuming a best case scenario). That's statistically unlikely.
So as long as you have a system of concentrated power, you will have the worst people attracted to it, and you will inevitably have that power fall into the hands of one of the worst possible person.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to not centralize power. In the security world we try to design systems that assume compromise and minimize impact, rather than just assuming that we will be right 100% of the time. If you build systems that maximially distribute power, then you minimize the impact of one horrible person.
Now, I didn't mention this because we're both already under enough stress, but...
Almost 90% of the nuclear weapons deployed around the world are in the hands of sociopathic dictators. Only two of the countries with nuclear weapons not straight up authoritarian, but they're not far off. We're one narcisistic crashout away from steralizing the surface of the Earth with nuclear hellfire. Maybe countries shouldn't exist, and *definitely* multiple thousands of nuclear weapons shouldn't exist and shouldn't all be wired together to launch as soon as one of these assholes goes a bit too far sideways.

2026-01-20 15:26:50 UTC

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Ok, actually, one more thing. There was an #OccupyICE in 2018 and it worked really well with far less support than there is now.
Ok, that's all, I'm dropping offline again. Go organize some shit!

2026-01-20 14:04:33 UTC

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I mean, yeah, and also it's working way better than it should. We better make sure it doesn't work, or it's 100% on us.

2026-01-20 09:35:17 UTC

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I also think it's worth just doing the math here. There aren't enough ICE agents to remove an occupation of more than a couple of facilities. They would have to rely on local police. A lot of police departments have been ordered not to support ICE activities. This means Trump would have to activate the military. If an occupation was peaceful, especially playful like Portland, deployment may not even be possible. Meanwhile, if ICE agents continue to be as violent as they are Governors may be forced to activate the national guard to protect citizens against ICE.
Forcing conflict when Trump is at his weakest, in a way that is non-violent, puts resistance in the best possible position.
At the same time, we are at a strange time of unity. Trump supporters are leaving over Epstein, some are even mad about the deportations, and he's otherwise systematically alienated basically his whole base (except literal Nazis working for ICE).
The AI bubble is, in a lot of ways, a fun house mirror reflection of the 2008 financial crash. The whole economy is held up by loans secured with "compute." Everyone hates this, and Trump's policies have made everything far worse.
#OccupyICE could actually have a lot of momentum and be difficult to stop, especially if folks went to ICE facilities in frog suits and Luigi bloc with banners demanding the release of the Epstein files.
At least, that's my impression from out here.

2026-01-20 09:03:02 UTC

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Of course, economic pressure isn't the only tool we have. Diversity of tactics is critical. I'm not going to tell anyone not to throw buckets of screws into the parking lots and driveways of ICE facilities or blockading facilities with burning dumpstes. Even if i don't promote those types of tactics, we should all STFU if we see people doing them. We all have a place. There are things we can all do. Everything is on the table and it should be, because ICE agents will intimidate you, steal your car, and even murder you for just filming them.
You can cower in fear, or you can stand up and fight with everything you have. Which or those do you want to remember yourself doing?

2026-01-20 08:58:30 UTC

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Economic pressure has always been the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. There's already a general strike being organized for this Friday.
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2026/01/20/18883119.php
(Original release https://minneapolisunions.org/system/files/2026-01/press_release_-_january_16_2026.pdf)
This has moved quickly, and it can keep moving quickly. The more people organizing, the faster the regime will back down and (I think quickly) collapse.

2026-01-20 08:48:19 UTC

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There are a lot of takeaways from this:
1. Organizing locally gives you a massive advantage because you will always know your local area better than ICE ever can.
2. Be agile. You can always change tactics faster than a centralized organization.
3. Organize now. The sooner you build your networks, the sooner you can learn.
4. Identify ICE facilities and organize monitoring them directly.
But I think the most interesting one that's not explicitly in there, one that's hinted at the last one, is to go on the offensive. ICE is already afraid. If we all take the anger we have at the murder of #ReneGood, find the local ICE facility that they'll stage from, and bring that anger to #OccupyICE we might be able to just shut the whole thing down preemptively. Completely stop all ICE operations across the US. If they want to fight, they can fight *with everyone, all at once.*
Shut down their ability to operate at all. They have a logistics pipeline. They need cars, they need oil in those cars, they need to be able to move those cars to target areas. They also need money to pay those agents. All of those can be disrupted.
The regime needs your money and labor to maintain the illusion of legitimacy. They chose a bad time because you can hit both of those at once *right now* with a combination of #GeneralStrike and #TaxStrike, and then #BoycottEverything.
The regime is weaker than it's ever been. It's flailing. Their own base is demanding the release of the #EpsteinFiles. Their last gasp attempt to prevent the radical change that's coming is just to ethnically cleanse the US back to the 50's (which is what they always meant by "Make America Great Again"). Trump will do anything to stay in power, even if it means killing everyone on Earth in the process. But Americans can end it now by going on the offensive.
Now is the time.
#USPol

2026-01-20 08:28:49 UTC

Everyone who hasn't already read the Twin Cities rapid response analysis should now:
https://crimethinc.com/2026/01/15/rapid-response-networks-in-the-twin-cities-a-guide-to-an-updated-model

2026-01-09 21:07:32 UTC

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The thing that Renee Good now knows, that Tortuguita knows, that Heather Heyer knows, that I only know because I glimpsed for a second, is that when you die fighting oppression you live forever in that memory of resistance. When we carve their names into a monument, along with all the other names of the murdered and disappeared, that will stand, perhaps, across from the statue of Willem in the park where the Northwest Detention Center once stood, they will always be reminders of what it looks like to sacrifice everything in order to be on the right side of history.
The names of those who resist live as ghosts, summoned by name to haunt future oppressors, summoned by name to awaken our own conscience to the call. Martyrs, whispered like the White Rose or yelled as a threat like John Brown, cannot die so long as any of us with a bit of spine carries even an ounce of humanity.
It is possible to die knowing you did the right thing, and I have felt it. There is an acceptance that is impossible to imagine without being there, without feeling it for yourself. You have nothing to fear in resisting, even if it ends you. But you will never forget the shame of doing nothing if you fail to.

2026-01-09 20:34:32 UTC

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As fascist goons ethnically cleanse their way through American cities, casually murdering anyone who slightly inconveniences them, I'm reminded of a Zapata quote I've kept close to my heart for a few decades now: “I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.”
#USPol

2026-01-09 20:22:34 UTC

The Onion nails it again...
https://youtube.com/shorts/-Tu9EABl4Vs

2025-12-29 15:54:16 UTC

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the US no longer has the leverage to make that work.

2025-12-26 07:42:24 UTC

The paradox of Nazism being both the most capitalist thing possible, defining itself as explicitly anticommunist, while masquerading as "socialism" is difficult to resolve until you understand one thing: fascism pivots around antisemitism (and its extension, conspiratorial thinking).
I'm, of course, not talking about the redefinition of "antisemitism" into meaning any criticism of Israel but rather an anti-Jewish conspiracy narrative rooted in Roman Christianity.
This is critical to understand as MAGA fascism pivots between capitalist and pseudo-anticapitalist with Trump in the middle. Hitler did the same thing. Strasserism helped the Nazis gain power by pulling in the Left. In the Nazis case they killed the Stasserists pretty quickly. Now, I think we're seeing an attempt to make the opposite pivot happen in MAGA. But it's all the same thing.
Fascism can infinitely fail to address the needs of the people while dismissing it's own responsibility for creating the problem by maintaining a permanent enemy.
This is why it's important to understand antisemitism and how to fight it. It's especially important now because the apparatus of violence in Israel is itself a tool of global fascism, and we finally have an opportunity to dismantle the whole thing. But we have to be aware of how fascists can pivot around to block this.
I've been reading Safety Through Solidarity, and I think it's especially relevant at this time.
https://www.akpress.org/safety-through-solidarity.html

2025-12-18 19:13:23 UTC

The #IWW #GDC as an antifascist organization was always kind of a hack. It was a beautiful hack and it worked well for what it did.
In 2016, as Trump was rising, I found info from the Twin Cities GDC. They were super organized, building an amazing community defense organization. When we (Seattle) went to set up our chapter, following their lead, they were extremely supportive. When I got shot, Twin Cities folks were at my house keeping my partner safe. They literally flew people out to support us. They very much remain in my mind when I think about what mutual aid looks like.
Unionism is an important strategy of a larger fight. But it's important to realize that it's not the other way around. The GDC was built to defend the union, because there wasn't something larger to do that work. It filled a gap.
When we organized against Trump, we tried to make the GDC the greater thing. We tried to make the GDC into the vehicle for social revolution against the fascist threat... And it sort of worked. We were able to do a lot.
But that was never what it was built to do. It was always built as an appendage of the IWW. This contains its own problem. If Unionism is the revolutionary movement, then it becomes impossible to build a truly revolutionary society. Unionism centers "workers" which implicitly decenters those who can't work in the traditional sense (the young, the elderly, those physically or mentally able to work). It also decenters care labor that hasn't yet been widely commodified. Sure, there are all types of hacks to patch the holes, but the fundamental construction starts from the wrong assumptions.
It felt, for a while, like things could go another way. Like that our ability to bring members in could shift things a bit, maybe set the GDC on more equal footing with the core focus of the IWW. But that was always an illusion, far less important to think about than the crushing terror of the regime we were fighting.
Now, I will absolutely trash talk the IWW on occasion but in the end I do think they're doing good and important work. Any criticism I have should be taken with a grain of salt... And I know I do have a lot of salt. Again, Unionism is an important strategy. It's useful both in improving immediate material conditions and as part of the most powerful weapon we have against the capitalist system: the general strike. It's important, I can't say that enough. But it's not sufficient.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and I wonder if there are any other GDC organizers or former organizers who might be feeling the same. Feel free to DM me. I'd like to get some more perspectives and see if my understanding from several years ago deviates significantly from what other folks are feeling right now.
I'd also like to bounce some ideas around that come from my own organizing experience.

2025-12-16 19:58:18 UTC

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Probably also worth mentioning copy levies as (at least) tangentially related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
I'd be interested in knowing how much global taxes on media just goes directly into the pockets of American IP holders.

2025-11-21 10:08:16 UTC

It's Interesting today that the popularization of @npub1fdr…lvhs's concept of "enshittification" is leading us to really think hard about how various methods of vendor lock-in enable corporations to abuse users. We see how first there's lock-in then quickly abuse follows, and recognize that the only way out of this trap is to build systems where users can leave at will.
But it's interesting that in this time of rising fascism no one is making the connection to fascism, as both increased lock in and enshittification of government. And no one is making the connection between the need to make systems optional to avoid enshittification, and libertarian socialist arguments against the systemic lock-in (and following abuse) of capitalism and the state.

2025-11-07 19:46:47 UTC

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You can bring down a government, smash a dictatorship, you have the power. This is an excellent strategy. But if you can go this far, if you can win this much, how much farther can you go? Is it enough to get back to the "normal" polycrisis, to return to microplastics and ecocide, to every open space filled with tent camps while luxury apartments continue to sit empty? Is it enough to be one injury or diagnosis away from unending debt?
What #SolarPunk future could we build instead? I expect it's whatever one you dream about, talk about, organize for, and fight for.

2025-11-07 19:38:13 UTC

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What's especially interesting, and dangerous to capitalism, is that there are a lot of opportunities that come out of this.
Corporations are destroying everything. We actually don't need them. We can build mutual aid networks, guerilla gardening, library socialism... When we stop with consumerism, we can find the joy in actually living, creating, being a creative human rather than simply a consumer. With a bit of momentum we can bend the system to our will. With enough momentum we can shatter it completely and free ourselves from this trap.
Things can go a lot of different ways. I'm excited to see how things go.
Edit:
I'm specifically excited about this...
https://www.blackoutthesystem.com/about-mutual-aid
This is cool. This is really fucking cool.

2025-11-07 19:30:14 UTC

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This is also a good way to make the protests actually valuable. The #NoKingsDay protests let people see how big the resistance was. It informed a section of the elite that their best bet was to resist rather than comply. The shutdown is already hurting the economy. The an economic blackout could be enough to break it... and we're all still waiting for the AI bubble to pop. It's gonna get really hot, really fast.
The great thing about the economic blackout as a strategy is that they don't have a mechanism to compel people to buy stuff. So it turns out that "make the economy scream" is a two player game. Go fucking figure.

2025-11-07 19:24:59 UTC

Economic boycott of everything and general strike Nov 25th Dec 2nd. When I was talking about #NoKings / #50501Movement needing to having an escalation plan, this is an excellent escalation. Hitting US retail on #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday coupled with a #PeoplesSickDay during that time could actually be enough to force the invocation of the 25th. There's already been an elite fracture. The government shut down is not the well calculated coup that I think Trump and co thought it was.
This whole #BlackOutTheSystem thing has a lot of potential....
https://www.blackoutthesystem.com/
#USPol

2025-10-30 15:57:16 UTC

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N Korea is propped up by continuous support of China.

2025-10-30 12:59:11 UTC

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The American Democratic Party, and the concept of "Democratic Socialism" within the US, comes largely from an authoritarian political tradition where the state offers services in exchange for the population allowing elites to continue parasitize the system. Then it is critical for Liberals to consume and destroy popular mutual aid, because real mutual aid undermines their carrot.
Democrats tend to imagine that anarchists want to destroy "all the good things" that governments do. The reality is that we want to build those good things ourselves so that we can reject the offer of those same good things, less well managed, with all the bad things attached.
Anarchists want to build pro-social systems (what if we didn't *need* snap, but just made sure everyone was fed?) while eliminating anti-social ones (do we really *need* to kidnap children, or could we just kind of stop doing that?).

2025-10-30 10:05:59 UTC

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left).
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties rarely get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

2025-10-21 08:08:20 UTC

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It should also be noted that any society that recognizes the concept of territorial sovereignty cannot possibly be egalitarian by the simple fact that borders necessarily create at least two classes: citizen and foreigner. Even if we pretend that all other issues with government could be resolved, this alone makes actual egalitarianism impossible.
It gets much worse when protections only apply to the "citizen" class, because anyone can then simply be deemed a non-citizen and must prove their citizenship status (which is literally just guilty until proven innocent). If protections only apply to citizens, then no one actually has any protections at all... which is the problem with the US right now, and always has been.

2025-10-21 07:56:29 UTC

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It might also be useful to distinguish between "democracy" and "democratic." A democracy is a type of government. All governments have territorial sovereignty, and most of them include competitive politics (that is, they are republican).
A democratic institution is an institution/organization controlled by the people who do the work or are served by it (or both). Not all democratic organizations are good, but I don't think an organization can be healthy without also being democratic. There are lots of ways to organize democratically, and not all of them are actually very good at representing folks.
Something can be a democracy while not being democratic. I would argue that there are no democracies that are, in fact, democratic because capitalism is absolutely anti-democratic.
All of the organizing I've done is both directly democratic and anti-capitalist. Rojava (now more officially known as DAANES) is a directly democratic libertarian socialist society, but it is not a "state" and has no "government" in the sense that it lacks territorial sovereignty. It is a de facto autonomous zone within Syria. Similarly, there are several indigenous "governed" autonomous zones within Mexico of which Chiapas is one (and the most well known).
The biggest difference is that democratic libertarian socialism organizes egalitarian societies around people and needs, while governments organize hierarchal societies around land and property rights.

2025-10-21 05:44:30 UTC

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yeah, that's exactly why prefigurative politics is so important.

2025-10-20 21:40:06 UTC

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things have to be really scary right now. I also feel it.
I tend to oppose governments specifically because they have a tendency to try to exterminate people like me. Perhaps it's my imagination then, because I can't imagine a government that could exist now and not be on the brink of doing so at any moment. Governments, for most of the time they have existed, have tried to enforce homogenatety through violence. Meanwhile, anthropology is full of examples of non-government systems that have much more complex concepts of gender and no concept of race.
I find it hard to imagine a hierarchial system that wouldn't just reinforce white supremacist cis hetero patriarchy. Meanwhile, I don't have to imagine systems that oppose it because I've been involved in organizing them.

2025-10-20 14:05:10 UTC

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No capitalist government could prevent this. But there are also systems that aren't necessarily identifiable as government. Google Rojava and Chiapas. There alternatives to "government." We don't need to restrict our imaginations to the things we've been forced to believe.
Folks never imagined fascism could be possible in the US. Maybe we could try something unimaginably good instead.

2025-10-20 13:05:32 UTC

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this assumes a pretty restricted reality that I don't think is backed up by evidence. There's literally no reason we should have one person with so much power, except that this system just evolved from feudalism instead of from hundreds of other traditions that Roman/European tradition mostly extinguished and erased.
There are, and have always been, more ways to organize people than under a king or an elected king with extra steps.

2025-10-20 09:55:51 UTC

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all of those things happened under democracy as well. American democracy has always been poisoned by the Senate, the electoral college, the "winner take all" system, the inescapable influence of capitalism. I'm not sure how it could have ever produced anything different. How would "restoring the machinery of democracy" not just be setting up for the next time?
Today W looks smart, competent, and presidential compared to Trump. IMO, if you "restore the machinery" without radical change, you're just setting yourself to look back fondly on Trump.

2025-10-20 09:22:34 UTC

QQ for all the "Restore the #RuleOfLaw" folks out there: When militarized police crushed Occupy for daring to challenge the logic of bailing out the bankers who crashed the economy rather than the people they fleeced, was that "Rule of Law"? When militarized police maimed and brutalized water protectors, was that "Rule of Law"? When oil companies and tech monopolies fund both parties and just happen to get legislation that keeps them in power, is that "Rule of Law"? When your tax dollars go to fund genocide, to pay to drop bombs on children, is that "Rule of Law"? When the NSA was spying on American citizens, was that "Rule of Law"? How about the drone strikes on Americans, was that "Rule of Law"? When cops murder people and then use "qualified immunity" to get away with it, is that "Rule of Law"?
Y'all keep talking about how #NoKings is about "restoring rule of law." It's got a bit of a "Make America Great Again" feel to it: you're invoking a return to a history that never actually existed.