@hex@kolektiva.social2026-05-29 22:15:58
I tried to write something up to talk about an idea, but it didn't quite work. I have a lot more I need to put into it. But I want to get an idea out, and, after talking with a person who pointed out some of the flaws in what I wrote, I think I can maybe write down the kernel of the idea here.
An acquaintance of mine did a deep dive on Operational Art and wrote his thesis (which prompted an earlier set of posts and an article I wrote for my professional-ish blog) on the intersection of the OODA loop and critical philosophy. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Kilcullen's Three Pillars model (after watching Andrewism's wonderful video) and Beer's VSM. The TL;DR of it is that there's a much better insurgency model. Of course, the insurgency model also works for a bunch of other things, because cybernetics lets you do all kinds of cool abstraction like that.
So as I was reading the essay of a comrade the other day, that model popped back into my head and I'm going to try to share what I can of it.
When colonizers came to the Salish region, they saw what they believed to be an untouched wilderness. They failed to see the ways in which Salish people tended the land. Indigenous fire practices were common on the northwest coast, and the suppression of those practices remains a problem. There is an interrelationship between an environment and the systems within it. Systems, like people, animals, and cultures, adapt to the environment. In doing so, those systems will also change the environment.
Social technology was invisible, so colonizers defaulted to either some kind of Rousseauvian or Malthusian model of these people. They were not, for the colonizers, people who had developed advanced social technologies to live in harmony with their world. They were, rather, people in "a state of nature."
The European influenced left continues to draw this Rousseauvian model, which continues through a lot of Anarchist revolutionary thought. European anarchists were heavily influenced by observations and theories around the behavior of indigenous people. The remnants of this thought still exist in the idea that the system must only be destroyed for us to be free.
This is the same obliviousness to social technology, that social technology actually exists, often informs both early colonizers and modern radicals.
It is through this obliviousness that we fail to recognize how capitalism is a social technology that is managed into existence and maintained, and how changes in the environment can threaten institutions that have become over-adapted to a specific version of that environment.
We can extend Kilcullen's metaphor of a "conflict ecosystem" through cybernetics into a much more rich model, populated by viable systems. The ecosystem itself has a fitness function, which drives adaptation within the environment. But all actors in the environment also affect it. Some try to manage the environment. Revolutions are often over who manages a social ecosystem, over who controls the social technology and what it does.
Once we see this dynamic at play, calls of "riot" and "revolution" make a whole lot less sense. Rather, the question becomes, "how do we change the ecosystem in such a way that it cannot be 'managed' at all?"
Graeber/Wengrow talked about Turtle Island indigenous social technologies in Dawn of Everything, such as the system of moieties and clans described in the book. So I have a good reading list as I think through this model, but I hope the "ecosystem" model is helpful (if not completely fleshed out).
I'd be interested in any critiques or thoughts to help develop this idea more.
@cdarwin@c.im2026-07-28 23:42:58
Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened representatives from 66 different nations on July 16
for a “ministerial meeting” on the resurgence of “political terrorism.”
The White House described the summit as the launch of “an unprecedented global offensive against the transnational threat of Radical Left terrorism.”
This historic occasion took the form of Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent taking turns as they said Na…
@heiseonline@social.heise.de2026-05-29 07:42:00
@playinprogress@assemblag.es2026-05-28 06:08:04
Have you ever really looked at the blooms of horse chestnuts? Yeah me either. Until a month ago I nicked this one, and now I am confused why they are not a staple for florists at this time of the year. I mean look! It even kept quite decently in that makeshift vase. And it wasn't the most beautiful I'd seen, that was on another tree, with even darker red stems, and entirely out of reach for me...
#photography
@fanf@mendeddrum.org2026-07-29 14:42:04
from my link log —
Documentation and analysis of the Linux random number generator.
https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/BSI/Publications/Studies/LinuxRNG/LinuxRNG_EN_V5_9.html
saved 2026-07-28
@kornel@mastodon.social2026-07-28 02:45:17
Taking a photo of a postit note instead of taking the note can be perfectly rational.
It's technologically a massive overkill too. Often the same content could be saved as a few ASCII chars needing thousands of times less storage and compute.
And the whole idea was absurd before digital photography. Why would you lug a camera, use one of 36 frames, and then go to a lab and wait 1h to get a print of a piece of paper on a more expensive paper, instead of taking the note in fro…
@alejandrobdn@social.linux.pizza2026-06-28 23:07:03
A Study of 26,000 Students Shows the AI Learning Trap
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-of-experience/202606/a-study-of-26000-students-shows-the-ai-learning-trap
Using AI can create s…
@davidaugust@mastodon.online2026-07-29 16:16:03
@ebinger@bildung.social2026-05-29 07:45:17
Und weiter geht's mit #Cefalù - wieder eine Normannenkathedrale und ein schöner Badestrand. Was will man mehr?
#sizilien2026
@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-29 17:01:11
The strait of Hormuz is Iran’s chief bargaining tool in the negotiations with the US
and so it was always likely to be the greatest point of contention.
Every inch of the 24-mile-wide waterway is being contested in a test of wills and patience.
For Iran, the continuation of the dispute is not a problem so long as it does not lose control.
Under the memorandum of understanding signed with Washington on 18 June,
substantive talks over Iran’s nuclear programme do n…
