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Blackcap @blackcap@todon.nl

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Combined with activism, direct action, and mutual aid, electoral politics at the national, provincial, and local levels form and essential piece of the socialist struggle. Electoralism may not (on its own) force the means of production out of bourgeois hands, but it will increase the profile of our ideas and shift the Overton Window in our favor.

Dewberry or trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus). They taste like small, very flavorful (and very delicious) blackberries. It figures in the parentage of the boysenberry and the loganberry, being bred into these specifically for its flavor.

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This article is unbelievably awful, but fun because of how wrong it is.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-tech-avengers-1530285064

TL;DR Industry insiders aren't going to save anyone from anything. Tweaking around with "screen time" or interface design or adding extra "street cred" from a younger generation doesn't address any of the real problems with Sillicon Valley.

If any of these rich morons were actually sincere they would have to abandon their business models and start again with federated and distributed systems with no data concentration. But of course they're not going to do that.
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pol, ICE, tech / microsoft Show more

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I found out that Google is hosting some Nazi sites collecting money for Unite the Right. Anyone have experience convincing Google to take them down?

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firearms and community armed selfdefense, anarchist perspective, podcast Show more

The rest of India is famed for collapsing into mass rioting when one religion feels slighted by another. Kerala is famed for collapsing into mass rioting when a government proposes cutting the health or education budget. And Kerala is one of the most religiously diverse states, not one of the most religiously homogenous. 2/2

It's a democratic socialist example and all, not an anarchist one, but how much things like hunger and lack of health care are really a lack off equitable distribution and not a lack of technology is exhibited by the Indian state of Kerala. Per capita income under $1K/yr (one of India's *poorest* states), near-universal literacy, life expectancy in the seventies and rising. Why? Class consciousness. 1/

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I propose a new ideology: #antifatalism

It's about the affirmative belief that humans can change the things that can in principle be changed by humans: Climate change, War, Poverty, etc. We don't have to be resigned to the idea that misery is neverending.

There's no natural law (not even entropy) that says we cannot fix these things. There's only us.

(Note that antifatalism does not imply belief in free will.)

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"In order to make any meaningful progress, we must at least agree that the Googles and the Facebooks of the world are not forces for good. On the contrary, they are threats to our human rights and democracy. We must at least agree that they are not our partners, sponsors, and friends, but our adversaries. Even today, we are not at this point. Even today, institutions that purport to advocate for human rights and democracy feature Google and Facebook as partners and sponsors."

A really good example of that was the Personal Democracy Forum earlier in the year, sponsored by those companies and promanently fearuring Google and Facebook speakers. It's hard to discuss what democracy means, or should become, in the internet era if Facebook is dominating the narrative.
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After the profdoctor phase ending in about 1994 the web became increasingly capitalistic, culminating in the dot com boom. During the dot com period venture capitalists were throwing pules of cash at any web project which claimed to have some commercial element - no matter how far fetched. There was a general belief that out of the chaos a few winners would emerge which would become the web equivalents of Microsoft or IBM in the preceding decades.

The real inflection point in the surveillance capital story came with web 2.0 in the mid 2000s. Before then the capitalistic stuff was aimed at the user as a paying customer. The commercialism of web 1.0 was a golden era, of sorts, in the sense that companies were trying to produce systems which met the needs of users (often unsuccessfully, admittedly). After web 2.0 the customer was advertisers and the user was just a unit or "impression" or series of "clicks" to be sold.

Life on Enclaudius, below the ice sheets covering the liquid oceans of the Saturnian moon? Evidence of complex organic molecules found.
news.nationalgeographic.com/20

@nemoudeis And this is totally bogus: "And organic farming reduces soil quality because it requires ploughing." You think no conventional farmer tills the soil, ever? Seriously?

@alexgleason Also, what happens if/when there's enough widespread revolutionary consciousness for anarchists to dismantle the state? Will the other side just throw in the towel cuz they are outnumbered and it's the nice thing to do? You think that will happen? Really? I think that's naive. *Of course* the ruling class will use violence to try and hold on to power. Then what?

@alexgleason Also, of course if both tactics are viable, nonviolence is preferable. Violent means should be a last resort.

Sorry about that boost. I have a soft spot for puns.

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What's a chicken's favorite music? Show more

Both thimbleberries and dewberries are now ripe in my neck of the woods! Yum!