@bourgwick@heads.social2025-11-01 23:43:56
50 years ago tonight, the jerry garcia band in new jersey, early & late sets with the paxton bros opening. garcia’s 5th appearance & 4th band to appear at the passaic capitol, the only venue besides keystone berkeley* where all 5 of his bands officially appeared (garcia/saunders, old & in the way, legion of mary, garcia band, & the dead). fall ’75, show #10. audience tape:
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-03 07:16:35
What are you going to do when the regime falls? After calling all your friends, after the great memes, after the parties, what are you going to do to make sure it never happens again? What world should we create?
Taxing billionaires is great and all, but we could build systems where billionaires are impossible. Is hoarding wealth and using it to control people even something we should consider part of a functional and humane system? Any system where one group of people doesn't have rights means that anyone can be stripped of their rights, like has happened with all the US citizens who've been illegally detained and deported by ICE. Does the concept of "rights" that must be defended with violence, that can be stripped away by people who can exercise more violence, even make sense? Or should the bedrock of a functional system be the obligations that we have to each other and to society, that cannot be severed or taken from us, that tell us we *must* defend regardless of whether systemic oppression will impact us or not?
Americans have been so restricted by the limitations of the two party system, only able to choose between options acceptable to different sections of the capitalist class. Would we even be able to imagine what we could do if those restrictions went away?
The fall of the Berlin wall was a surprise. The fall of Assad was faster than anyone expected. One day the government of Nepal was an unrepentant oligarchy, the next it was on fire. Everything can change in an instant, faster than anyone expects. No one can predict revolutionary change. Will you be ready if the opportunity presents itself?
The US cannot be fixed. The economic system is a ponzi scheme that has been patched again and again, but has finally run out of options. Racism, sexism, and Christian nationalism are baked into the system at every level. Trump gutted the system of soft power that held the US economy together, now there is only a slow decline. Even after he's gone, the damage is done. Once we let go of how to fix something that cannot be fixed, we can start to imagine something that cannot be achieved within the current system.
This is a time of opportunity. Do not burrow so deep in terror that you miss your chance to dream.
#USPol
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-31 20:14:37
For railway enthusiasts and ruin hunters alike,
these so-called "phantom stations" that have ceased service
offer a glimpse into Tokyo’s past.
Hidden from daily view and often closed to the public, they mark moments of transition in the capital’s transit history
— from the early years of railway and subway construction to the rapid postwar rebuild.
More than curiosities, they stand as weathered industrial records of how Tokyo has expanded, reconfigur…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-09-29 13:50:53
New York-based Modal Labs, which offers a serverless cloud platform to build AI apps and run AI inference, raised $87M led by Lux Capital at a $1.1B valuation (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2025/09/29/modal…
@gray17@mastodon.social2025-10-01 06:52:16
LLMs are endgame capitalism. once you run out of ordinary things to do with $, the only thing left is to outspend rivals in some market, in order to become *the* monopoly, for that ultimate power.
existing markets are regulated to be "useful", so it's hard to win there. it's easier (seems easier) to win in new markets.
cryptocurrency was one, "new money". VR tried to be one, "new reality", but participation is too hard.
LLMs are "n…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-09-30 13:10:51
Chipmaker Cerebras Systems raised a $1.1B Series G from Fidelity, Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital, and others at an $8.1B post-money valuation ahead of its planned IPO (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/30/a-year-…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-08-28 10:04:33
For every $1 valuation of a billion-dollar company, at least 50¢ is in the pocket of a lucky person who thinks they're smart, most of whom had rich parents to boot. There's like, 10,000 of these people, tops, yet their sociopathic bets on everything from Juicero to "the metaverse" to "AI" pull technology development around by the nose.
Did I mention that this crap is only a side table to them after they ran out of "war" and "burning down the planet" to invest in?
#Capitalism is a casino, and most people can't even aspire beyond being a bigger chip.
@cdarwin@c.im2025-08-30 23:58:24
In June 2025, the Trump administration pressured University of Virginia (UVA) president James Ryan to resign,
threatening to withdraw federal funding due to an alleged lack of compliance with civil rights law.
Like other elite higher education institutions such as Harvard,Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and many others targeted by the Trump administration,
UVA capitulated to the coercive authority and dictatorial weaponization of civil rights law.
UVA buckled …
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-16 18:25:43
Email: Ron Conway, a close friend of Marc Benioff for 25 years, stepped down from the Salesforce Foundation board, citing Benioff's comments supporting Trump (Heather Knight/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-08-06 00:56:01
Sources: AI video startup Runway is looking to raise ~$500M at a $5B pre-money valuation; rival Luma AI aims to raise $1.1B at a $3.2B pre-money valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/runway-luma-talks-mul…
