Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

In the 1980s, there were the "Atari Democrats," many of whom were ex-Republicans who gave up fighting in their party. In the 1990s, there were the neoliberals like former "Goldwater Girl" Hillary Clinton. Cable punditry and tony op-ed pages were overrun with them as well.

Fast forward to today and Democrats are being hounded constantly by whiners like David Brooks or Bret Stephens, commentators who represent no one and who have never been right about anything.

@siderea

Biden the man doesn't matter so much anymore. He's one of the most privileged people in the world, and is as likely as anyone to be able to age with dignity.

Seeing people say, literally, that "his brain doesn't work", using that exact phrase, and offering no evidence beyond his having mixed up names, does matter.

And it matters to me *personally* because it tells me what I can expect as my movement slows down and my hair gets grayer.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I still think it was shamefully ableist when everyone was gleefully declaring that Joe Biden's tendency to mess up word recall indicated that his "brain didn't work".

Poverty is a policy choice. Mass incarceration is a policy choice. Inequality is a policy choice. Insulin rationing is a policy choice. Climate disintegration is a policy choice. Billionaire tax loopholes are a policy choice.

Make no mistake: We have the power to change things.

So I’ve been using Microsoft Stream at work to auto-caption videos. Part of my job is quality assurance so I double-check the captions for errors.

One recent annoyance is that the captioning software censors some words, replacing them with asterisks. One word in particular that has been a thorn in my side is the word “nipple”. I have had to work on several BREASTFEEDING videos. Needless to say, I’ve been retyping in the word “nipple” a lot.

Come to today, I’m working on a video about transgender and non-binary folks. The speaker said, “There is no such thing as straight sex and gay sex.” Lo and behold Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided to censor the words “gay sex”. “Straight sex” is uncensored.

I’m fucking livid, but I have no real way to contact Microsoft on this. But, mark it down and spread the word, Microsoft are fucking homophobic prudes.

Description of my chapter "Smashing Whiteness: Race, Class, and Punk Culture in the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation" in "DIY OR DIE! Do-It-Yourself, Do-It-Together & Punk Anarchism," from Active Distribution, available in the US from @pmpress https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1756

#books #anarchism #punk #history

“Recent work on elite perceptions of public opinion shows that reelection-motivated politicians systematically misperceive the opinions of their constituents to be more conservative than they are.”

*looks around at SF politicians breathlessly praising the police*

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12833

The Ju/’hoansi protocol

Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity

https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-ju-hoansi-can-tell-us-about-group-decision-making

Mozilla’s system only measures the success rate of ads—it doesn’t help companies target those ads—and it’s less susceptible to abuse, EFF’s Lena Cohen told @FastCompany. “It’s much more privacy-preserving than Google’s version of the same feature.” https://www.fastcompany.com/91167564/mozilla-wants-you-to-love-firefox-again

Jem Bendell - Breaking together Part 2

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/podcast42124/episodes/2024-08-02T11_07_49-07_00

My political statment for the day: If toilet paper is free in schools and elsewhere, tampons and sanitary napkins should be free.

[New video] Massacre in Douradina and the Kaiowá Guarani Resistance

https://kolektiva.media/w/b3RMXGiXcpvuG9rDpgoKJQ

In July and August 2024, the Kaiowá Guarani villages and reclaimed territories in the Panambi - Lagoa Rica Indigenous Land, in the territories occupied by the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, suffered armed attacks at the behest of landowners. Dozens of people have been seriously injured. But no government will be able to stop the genocide of indigenous peoples.

At last night’s Lifehouse talk I was once again asked a question some version of which seems to be cropping up just about everywhere I do this: “All of this sounds great, but how can we *scale* it?”

I know I court puzzlement in answering that I’m not interested in scale. I’m interested in propagation: in the transmission of a set of guiding principles & agreements from place to place, for people to interpret as they will & make whatever use of that they can. The difference seems critical to me.

Reddit kicks its volunteer moderators and users in the teeth again, as it moves toward putting up paywalls on popular subreddits.

This is a company that consistently demonstrates contempt for the people who made it succeed.

We need genuine alternatives.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/reddit-mulls-showing-ads-in-more-places-paywalled-subreddits/

Hello! We are a small independent bookshop in Stow, in the Scottish Borders. We are no longer using Twitter, for obvious reasons, but could use some new followers on Mastodon and other social media channels - where our presence is smaller than on Twitter. Please help / share this is you can! Thank you.

Scam of the moment: "obituary content mills" https://elgan.com/scam-of-the-moment-obituary-content-mills

Braving the heat for #BlackHat2024? Come find EFF in the Business Hall! We’re in the 4400 section in the AI Zone 🤖 https://www.eff.org/event/eff-black-hat-usa-0

Week three of Republicans' "Act Normal" Initiative is a resounding failure. https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/08/02/republicans-manual-for-acting-normal/

Guy Debord: "The first stage of the economy's domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having––human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but what one possessed.

The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender "lonely crowds."

The spectacle was born from the world's loss of unity, and the immense expansion of the modern spectacle reveals the enormity of this loss."

Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (PM Press Edition) is available now! https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1655

#books #bookstodon

Why am I not surprised?

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/democrats-vp-choice-tim-walz-has-a-history-of-working-on-the-side-of-monied-interests-against-workers.html