Tootfinder

Happening right now in Gaza: Israel’s occupation force is expanding its ground offensive.
(Screenshot posted from private chat with permission.)
@…
#israel #genocide

Mississippi Cotton Farmers Face Tough Decisions Amid Falling Prices, Rising Costs (Mississippi Free Press)
https://www.mississippifreepress.org/mississippi-cotton-farmers-face-tough-decisions-amid-falling-prices-rising-costs/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250714/p113#a250714p113

TL;DR: what if nationalism, not anarchy, is futile?
Since I had the pleasure of seeing the "what would anarchists do against a warlord?" argument again in my timeline, I'll present again my extremely simple proposed solution:
Convince the followers of the warlord that they're better off joining you in freedom, then kill or exile the warlord once they're alone or vastly outnumbered.
Remember that even in our own historical moment where nothing close to large-scale free society has existed in living memory, the warlord's promise of "help me oppress others and you'll be richly rewarded" is a lie that many understand is historically a bad bet. Many, many people currently take that bet, for a variety of reasons, and they're enough to coerce through fear an even larger number of others. But although we imagine, just as the medieval peasants might have imagined of monarchy, that such a structure is both the natural order of things and much too strong to possibly fail, in reality it takes an enormous amount of energy, coordination, and luck for these structures to persist! Nations crumble every day, and none has survived more than a couple *hundred* years, compared to pre-nation societies which persisted for *tends of thousands of years* if not more. I'm this bubbling froth of hierarchies, the notion that hierarchy is inevitable is certainly popular, but since there's clearly a bit of an ulterior motive to make (and teach) that claim, I'm not sure we should trust it.
So what I believe could form the preconditions for future anarchist societies to avoid the "warlord problem" is merely: a widespread common sense belief that letting anyone else have authority over you is morally suspect. Given such a belief, a warlord will have a hard time building any following at all, and their opponents will have an easy time getting their supporters to defect. In fact, we're already partway there, relative to the situation a couple hundred years ago. At that time, someone could claim "you need to obey my orders and fight and die for me because the Queen was my mother" and that was actually a quite successful strategy. Nowadays, this strategy is only still working in a few isolated places, and the idea that one could *start a new monarchy* or even resurrect a defunct one seems absurd. So why can't that same transformation from "this is just how the world works" to "haha, how did anyone ever believe *that*? also happen to nationalism in general? I don't see an obvious reason why not.
Now I think one popular counterargument to this is: if you think non-state societies can win out with these tactics, why didn't they work for American tribes in the face of the European colonizers? (Or insert your favorite example of colonialism here.) I think I can imagine a variety of reasons, from the fact that many of those societies didn't try this tactic (and/or were hierarchical themselves), to the impacts of disease weakening those societies pre-contact, to the fact that with much-greater communication and education possibilities it might work better now, to the fact that most of those tribes are *still* around, and a future in which they persist longer than the colonist ideologies actually seems likely to me, despite the fact that so much cultural destruction has taken place. In fact, if the modern day descendants of the colonized tribes sow the seeds of a future society free of colonialism, that's the ultimate demonstration of the futility of hierarchical domination (I just read "Theory of Water" by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson).
I guess the TL;DR on this is: what if nationalism is actually as futile as monarchy, and we're just unfortunately living in the brief period during which it is ascendant?

The Othello AI Arena: Evaluating Intelligent Systems Through Limited-Time Adaptation to Unseen Boards
Sundong Kim
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09292 https://…

The Othello AI Arena: Evaluating Intelligent Systems Through Limited-Time Adaptation to Unseen Boards
The ability to rapidly adapt to novel and unforeseen environmental changes is a cornerstone of artificial general intelligence (AGI), yet it remains a critical blind spot in most existing AI benchmarks. Traditional evaluation largely focuses on optimizing performance within fixed environments, failing to assess systems' flexibility and generalization capabilities when faced with even subtle rule or structural modifications. Addressing this gap, I introduce the Othello AI Arena, a novel benchmar…

Crime Keeps Falling. Here's Why. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/opinion/crime-statistics-washington-dc.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250814/p43#a250814p43

Jasmine Crockett Tears Into MAGA Rhetoric Following Kirk Death: 'I Am Going On Facts' (Marco Margaritoff/HuffPost)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jasmine-crockett-slams-maga-rhetoric-charlie-kirk-death_n_68c47defe4b0b3dca95ed790
http://www.memeorandum.com/250913/p64#a250913p64

TIFF Pulls Invite For October 7th Documentary 'The Road Between Us'; Filmmakers Say Fest Has "Censored Its Own Programming" (Anthony D'Alessandro/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/08/tiff-pulls-october-7-documentary-from-lineup-1236484968/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250813/p100#a250813p100

Democrats fear falling into GOP trap on government shutdown (Alexander Bolton/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5499731-democrats-government-shutdown-threat/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250912/p40#a250912p40

South Korean workers return home after days in detention following US immigration raid (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-hyundai-georgia-immigration-raid-dd97210ffb6126bdf763228dc03918e0
http://www.memeorandum.com/250912/p53#a250912p53

Officials release new video of person fleeing in Charlie Kirk shooting, still lack a name or location (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/11/charlie-kirk-fatal-shooting-investigation-utah/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzU3NTYzMjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzU4OTQ1NTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NTc1NjMyMDAsImp0aSI6IjJiYjFkZDI3LWFjNTMtNDA0MC05YzFjLTNmOTU2MGM0ZWJkOCIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9uYXRpb24vMjAyNS8wOS8xMS9jaGFybGllLWtpcmstZmF0YWwtc2hvb3RpbmctaW52ZXN0aWdhdGlvbi11dGFoLyJ9.uMqUcdbqawDUjLqtE5MbkV7DWle8JzlUb9HhLHldsDg&itid=gfta
http://www.memeorandum.com/250911/p188#a250911p188