@aardrian@toot.cafeWhile in Jamestown, NY, I hit the library (as one does on vacation). It was having a book sale. There was a rack of Amish romance (Jamestown is adjacent to lots of Amish country).
I was quite tempted to buy some. Especially this Amish retelling of “Sense and Sensibility.”
I just need to know!
@memeorandum@universeodon.comAmish Shah Wins Democratic Primary in Swing Arizona House District (Tim Balk/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/us/politics/amish-shah-arizona-house-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.z1A.pnOT._tvL88uAP0ER&smid=nytcore-ios-share
http://www.memeorandum.com/260722/p132#a260722p132
@jom@social.kontrollapparat.deMy pleasure. 😎
#40c3 Sticker
#AI #LLM #Vibecoding
Sourc…
@cdarwin@c.imThe Western states hold four of the nation’s
18 toss-up races as rated by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Two are for Republican-held seats in Arizona,
both in districts that Trump carried narrowly in 2024,
and both top targets of Democrats.
In an open Phoenix-area district,
Democrat Amish Shah,
a physician and former state lawmaker,
faces Republican Jay Feely,
a Trump-endorsed former NFL player.
@kexpmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #KEXP's #PacificNotions
Dionisaf:
🎵 The Amish
#Dionisaf
#newRelease 🆕 album
https://whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com/track/the-amish
https://open.spotify.com/track/2u7GNYBOFKXov3nSLDzzbm
@hex@kolektiva.socialOH! I forgot the whole "out of band" thing. Let me get into that.
When you put all this together you have a business owned by a church (or, in the Dutch case, an FFI) to interface with capitalism and then a community that's collectively controlled via the legal entity of a "church." (Again, I like the word "coven," but I'm trying to use the legal definition here.)
This gives you a community that exists partially outside of the dominant system. If this seems like a new idea, it is absolutely not. There are very insular religious communities all over. Many are really oppressive cults (go watch Wild Wild Country), others are insular religious communities (for which there is a lot of legitimate criticism, but I'm only talking about decipherability here) such as Haredim or Mennonites. In some ways Tribes match this also, with various tribal governments organizing things for members.
In all of these cases, there exists an element that is outside of the dominant system. This becomes somewhat "invisible." How well do you understand the inner workings of an Amish community? How much do you think a CEO cares or thinks about them?
There are many hidden worlds that only become revealed when they become a problem (such as when a cult leader tries to take over a county by spraying e. coli on a bunch of salad bars.) This can be good if you're trying to build a new society without attracting the attention, but insular communities can also permit abusive dynamics that could otherwise be identified by the larger society. So keep the risks in mind, and be active about preventing them. Hierarchy is dangerous, but hierarchy in hidden groups can be especially dangerous.
@jeang3nie@social.linux.pizza200 mile day on the Super Meteor. Down to Coshocton to close my dad's bank account, pretty much all back roads. Here's my one stopover at Dover Dam on the way down.
Central Ohio has some fantastic roads for motorcycling once you get off the highway. You just have to watch for farm vehicles and Amish buggies from time to time. But you get lots of curves and rolling hills through some really beautiful farmland and forests.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialThe world needs more science fiction of the social- variety.
Rather than imagining how life could be different because of advances in purely mechanistic technologies, why not imagine how life could be different because of advances in social technologies: new inventions of ways societies can be organized or groups of people can relate to each other.
Some concrete examples of existing social technologies: Amish barn-raising, dolphin surf-fishing, online crowd-funding, Capoeira, potlucks, punk rock concerts, etc.
Each of these things was invented at some point, spread (not inevitably) through social communication, allows groups to achieve a specific purpose (or facilitates several different outcomes) and may or may not require specific tools or mechanistic technologies. There will be new social technologies in the future, and they could radically change how human societies function and what human lives look like, just as mechanistic technologies can.
In the current sociopolitical climate, we see one vision of the future, heavily propagandized, which assures us that advances in mechanistic technology will make life ever easier for humans, leading into a golden age where human needs are met by robots. In this imagination, each individual can actualize the productive capacity to meet their own needs because an individual's productive capacity has been multiplied in every dimension by new mechanistic technologies. Humans can finally be rid of the messy complexity of community-dependence and be totally free because mechanistic technologies will replace the need for community connections to satisfy material desires.
But there's an ugly underside to this vision explored by cyberpunk, where advances in mechanistic technologies bring us to a point of total hierarchical domination and control. In this future, productivity-multipliers are recognized as force-multipliers, and the humans who gain control of them use them to subjugate everyone else.
Some of the best science fiction authors, like Le Guin or Asimov, look at not only mechanistic but also at social technologies, and often at the interaction between the two. Social technologies also have the capacity to radically change the human condition, but they don't lend themselves as well to the power fantasy or libertarian utopia of the self-sufficient individual. Social technologies involve people satisfying their needs through dependence on others, and in turn being obligated to take part in communities.
As an anarchist, I believe that the social technologies needed for human flourishing have not been invented yet. I also believe that with the right social technologies, even without significant advances in mechanistic technologies, it's possible for everyone to be able to meet their own needs through community, in a truly sustainable way.
I wish we had more authors using their craft to help explore the space of social technologies and inspire others to join in that exploration, so that the technologies we need can more quickly be invented and evangelized.
#anarchy #SciFi #technology
