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@tiotasram@kolektiva.social
2025-11-12 01:35:46

Just finished "The Word for World is Forest" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Can't believe I didn't read this one earlier, and this strengthens my resolve to finish off the rest of her stuff I have yet to read sooner. I think it benefits somewhat from having read it after "Four Ways to Forgiveness" which gives more of the Hainish context. Certainly none of the blurbs I had read about it did it any measure of justice, which is one reason I hadn't prioritized it. More than being about colonization, it's about a solution to the paradox of tolerance, and both the price and imperfections of that solution. As usual with Le Guin's science fiction, it's a rich companion to anarchist thought.
I think the typical objection to seeing it as an answer to the warlord question would be that it serendipitously positions the indigenous population with more power and a less ruthless opponent than in the imagined scenario, and it uses the League of Worlds as a sort of deus ex machina to foreclose further retribution. Ultimately that's why I think it's more about the paradox of tolerance than anything else, but I also think in regards to the warlord problem that we are too quick to underestimate just how numerous and enthusiastic the opponents of a warlord might be, and to overestimate the strength of technological weapons wielded by frail (and psychologically unarmored) humans.
In any case, Le Guin gives this book's alien humans yet another fascinatingly credible capability, and getting to see the introduction of ansible technology with all its implications is pretty cool too. Maybe not

@Techmeme@techhub.social
2025-11-25 11:10:46

X exposing political accounts' location shows why trust and safety teams mattered: to combat coordinated inauthentic behavior, not "censorship" of viewpoints (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)
techdirt.com/2025/11/24/xs-new<…

@PaulWermer@sfba.social
2026-01-08 00:38:58

And on a non- political gripe: Once again, #Google maps directions for walking wants to send me across a busy street, midway between 2 traffic lights.
Why does Google want pedestrians to take risks? Or do they just want to kill me because I'm not taking Waymo?
This is a well mapped area (San Francisco) so they must have the data on both traffic and signals.

@paulwermer@sfba.social
2026-01-08 00:38:58

And on a non- political gripe: Once again, #Google maps directions for walking wants to send me across a busy street, midway between 2 traffic lights.
Why does Google want pedestrians to take risks? Or do they just want to kill me because I'm not taking Waymo?
This is a well mapped area (San Francisco) so they must have the data on both traffic and signals.

@ruth_mottram@fediscience.org
2025-12-04 10:47:44

På vej til ministeriet til at snakke havniveaustigninger nu og i fremtiden. Skulle jeg udgivet min foredrag senere? (Endda måske på min peertube kanal, der har været meget stille for de seneste tiden..?)
ja på dansk
nej
ja på engelsk
why not both?

@Mediagazer@mstdn.social
2025-11-25 12:15:48

X exposing political accounts' location shows why trust and safety teams mattered: to combat coordinated inauthentic behavior, not "censorship" of viewpoints (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)
techdirt.com/2025/11/24/xs-new<…

@egallager@social.treehouse.systems
2025-11-01 19:02:57

Reviewing my sample ballot for Concord's municipal elections Tuesday; my recommendations:
- Mayor: I like both Byron and Kate West. Vote your conscience.
- Councilor-at-large: Fisto is my first choice, then either Amanda Grady Sexton or Fred Keach. Definitely not Robert Washburn, though.
- Ward 6 Councilor: Vote Aislinn Kalob!
- School Board: Vote Cara Meeker!
- Sale of Eastman: Kinda wish we could know who it'd be sold to first, but sure, why not
- Social districts: Sure, although I'll want to follow this up by attending the city council meetings where they work out the details, and make sure they limit them to individual fully-pedestrianized city blocks (e.g. Bicentennial Square, Eagle Square)
- Keno: It is currently prohibited. It is necessary to vote YES on this question to continue to prohibit it (because otherwise new state law would require it to be allowed by-right), so I say yes, do that, vote to prohibit it.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al
2025-10-24 16:19:42

“I sat beside a boy who tried to smile at me. I couldn’t return a real smile. Tears welled in my eyes as I realized words could never reach the horrors his soul had witnessed. All I could do was place my hand gently on his shoulder and whisper, ‘You are not alone.’”
@…

@skington@glasgow.social
2026-01-08 01:17:03

Bad news about Zoose.
He collapsed shortly before Christmas, and he’s been in and out of the vet school since then. They have no idea why he collapsed (and he’s not done it again since); but on top of a slightly enlarged pulmonary artery, and unknown markings on his spleen and liver, he has a number of growths in his lung that are almost certainly cancer. He’s started to cough. 1/2

Zoose, our beautiful white husky (they all are), lying on a green rug, with my wife Cleodhna also lying on the rug, reaching out to him, in a yin-yang-style arrangement. They are both for the moment at peace.

The atmosphere of fear surrounding Trump’s cult of personality has kept Republicans from criticizing him
even when they think he’s wrong.
But consider the list of issues on which notable Republican officeholders and influencers are now breaking with Trump,
or at the very least fighting amongst themselves in ways that weaken his movement:
After months of resisting the release of the Epstein files, Trump faced a revolt from his own party in Congress,
where both ho…

@CerstinMahlow@mastodon.acm.org
2025-11-25 20:16:50

Wait, what? But why did he pardon them again? Why not start a quest to find both turkeys before Thanksgiving to serve them on two golden plates in his new ballroom? What do you mean with the ballroom isn’t finished yet?
journa.host/@w7voa/11561145191

@teledyn@mstdn.ca
2025-12-02 04:35:18
Content warning: re: intense Gnome frustrations no one should be forced to read

and so, once again, the 'solution' isn't in the distro or legacy, it is in the wiki on the internals of Evolution where I just incidentally learn it can be a flatpak or not, and thus there are TWO .local/share folders to wipe. So I delete all accts in Evo, empty trash just in case, exit, wipe those folders, go into Settings, delete the Google connection which shows as two identical so delete them both, reboot.
On boot, go straight to settings which shows none, add Google and I'm in, quick as a wink. I start #Evolution, and lo, there it is, my account fetching emails!
Now to figure that #mastodonel thing and why mastodon.plstore is so problematic.

@hex@kolektiva.social
2025-11-17 08:52:05

The implications are interesting enough when we apply this to systems like capitalism or national governments, but there are other very interesting implications when applied to systems like race or gender.
Like, as a cis man the only way I can be free to express and explore my own masculinity is if the masculinity I participate in is one which allows anyone the freedom to leave. Then I have an obligation to recognize the validity of nom-masculine trans identity as a necessary component of my own. If I fail to do this, then I trap myself in masculinity and allow the system to control me rather than me to be a free participant in the system.
But if it's OK to escape but not enter, that's it's own restriction that constrains the freedom to leave. It creates a barrier that keeps people in by the fear that they cannot return. So in order for me to be free in my cis masculine identity, I must accept non-masculine trans identities as they are and accept detransitioning as also valid.
But I also need to accept trans-masc identities because restricting entry to my masculinity means non-consensually constraining other identities. If every group imposes an exclusion against others coming in, that, by default, makes it impossible to leave every other group. This is just a description of how national borders work to trap people within systems, even if a nation itself allows people to "freely" leave.
So then, a free masculinity is one which recognizes all configurations of trans identities as valid and welcomes, if not celebrates, people who transition as affirmations of the freedom of their own identity (even for those who never feel a reason to exercise that same freedom).
The most irritating type of white person may look at this and say, "oh, so then why can't I be <not white>?" Except that the critique of transratial identities has never been "that's not allowed" and has always been "this person didn't do the work." If that person did the work, they would understand that the question doesn't make sense based on how race is constructed. That person might understand that race, especially whiteness, is more fluid than they at first understood. They might realize that whiteness is often chosen at the exclusion of other racialized identities. They would, perhaps, realize that to actually align with any racialized identity, they would first have to understand the boot of whiteness on their neck, have to recognize the need to destroy this oppressive identity for their own future liberation. The best, perhaps only, way to do this would be to use the privilege afforded by that identity to destroy it, and in doing so would either destroy their own privilege or destroy the system of privilege. The must either become themselves completely ratialized or destroy the system of race itself such being "transracial" wouldn't really make sense anymore.
But that most annoying of white person would, of course, not do any such work. Nevertheless, one hopes that they may recognize the paradox that they are trapped by their white identity, forced forever by it to do the work of maintaining it. And such is true for all privileged identities, where privilege is only maintained through restrictions where these restrictions ultimately become walls that imprison both the privileged and the marginalized in a mutually reinforcing hell that can only be escaped by destroying the system of privilege itself.

@darkrat@chaosfurs.social
2025-12-27 10:51:07

So now we know why there was a suspicious hole in the #39c3 Fahrplan
GPG 0-Day(s) - Spicy
gpg.fail
17:15 CET

@jerome@jasette.facil.services
2025-12-30 21:50:01

A core problem of #ecommerce especially with small business is always about what happens when you ship to someone and the package goes missing.
Should the business be responsible?
Most consumers of course say yes.
But as a small business, why is a package stolen on a porch the responsability of the retailer, and not the home insurance?
I see arguments on both s…

@gwire@mastodon.social
2025-11-30 09:18:13

Heard a TV news report say that the courts backlog started during Covid.
This completely papers over a situation that predates 2010 and is the responsibility of both main parties. Any small progress the previous government made in ten years was wiped out by the pandemic - but the underlying condition is why it's still not recovering.

@hex@kolektiva.social
2025-12-26 07:42:24

The paradox of Nazism being both the most capitalist thing possible, defining itself as explicitly anticommunist, while masquerading as "socialism" is difficult to resolve until you understand one thing: fascism pivots around antisemitism (and its extension, conspiratorial thinking).
I'm, of course, not talking about the redefinition of "antisemitism" into meaning any criticism of Israel but rather an anti-Jewish conspiracy narrative rooted in Roman Christianity.
This is critical to understand as MAGA fascism pivots between capitalist and pseudo-anticapitalist with Trump in the middle. Hitler did the same thing. Strasserism helped the Nazis gain power by pulling in the Left. In the Nazis case they killed the Stasserists pretty quickly. Now, I think we're seeing an attempt to make the opposite pivot happen in MAGA. But it's all the same thing.
Fascism can infinitely fail to address the needs of the people while dismissing it's own responsibility for creating the problem by maintaining a permanent enemy.
This is why it's important to understand antisemitism and how to fight it. It's especially important now because the apparatus of violence in Israel is itself a tool of global fascism, and we finally have an opportunity to dismantle the whole thing. But we have to be aware of how fascists can pivot around to block this.
I've been reading Safety Through Solidarity, and I think it's especially relevant at this time.
akpress.org/safety-through-sol

@hex@kolektiva.social
2025-11-19 06:07:23

Part of why #Trump has always been so hard to pin down politically is that he was always representing highly conflicting interests. Now, as that eats him alive, the GOP is fracturing in to two main groups: the Pinochet/Franco wing and the Hitler wing.
The Pinochet/Franco wing (let's call them PF) are lead by Vance. PF are also a coalition with some competing interests, but basically it's evangelical leaders, Opus Dei (fascist catholics), tech fascists (Yarvinites), pharma, and the other normal big republican donors. They support Israel, some because apartheid is extremely profitable and some because they support the genocide of Palestinian in order to bring the end of the world. They are split between extremely antisemitic evangelicals and Zionists, wanting similar things for completely different reasons. PF wants strong immigration enforcement because it lets them exploit immigrants, they don't want actual ethnic cleansing (just the constant threat). They want H1B visas because they want to a precarious tech work force. They want to end tariffs because they support free trade and don't actually care about things being made here.
The Hitler wing are lead by Nick Fuentes. I think they're a more unified group, but they're going to try to pull together a coalition that I don't think can really work. They're against Israel because they believe in some bat shit antisemitic conspiracy theory (which they are trying to inject along side legitimate criticism of Israel). They are focused on release of the #EpsteinFiles because they believe that it shows that Epstein worked for Mossad. They don't think that the ICE raids are going far enough, they oppose H1Bs because they are racists. They want a full ethnic cleansing of the US where everyone who isn't "white" is either enslaved for menial labor, deported, or dead. But they're also critical of big business (partially because of conspiracy theories but also) because they think their best option is to push for a white socialism (red/brown alliance).
Both of them want to sink Trump because they see him as standing in the way of their objectives. Both see #Epstein as an opportunity. Both of them have absolutely terrifying visions of authoritarian dictatorships, but they're different dictatorships.with opposing interests. Even within these there may be opportunities to fracture these more.
While these fractures decrease the likelihood of either group getting enough people together, their vision is more clear and thus more likely to succeed if they can make that happen. Now is absolutely *not* the time to just enjoy the collapse, we need to keep up or accelerate anti-fascist efforts to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of history.
Edit:
I should not that this isn't *totally* original analysis. I'll link a video later when I have time to find it.
Here it is:
#USPol