Tootfinder

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.

In three separate, independent, high-quality polls released this week, Trump’s overall approval rating is in the low 30s,
representing the worst rapport he’s had with the American public since the end of his first term and the January 6 riot at the Capitol building. 
The three major polls
—CNN, AP-NORC, and Quinnipiac
— have Trump at 34 percent, 33 percent and 32 percent approval, respectively. 
These are brutal numbers.
The CNN poll gives us more insight as…

Trump Is Really, Really Unpopular, New Polling Shows
Donald Trump's approval rating is hovering in the low 30s, according to three reputable polls released this week as the Iran war intensifies.

Americans are neither as hostile to socialism as they once were
nor as positive toward capitalism as they have been in the past.
More important than polling, however, is the fact that for many Americans the “communist threat” is a total abstraction.
There are tens of millions of voters (
who were young children when the Soviet Union fell.
There are millions more who weren’t yet born.
For these Americans, communism is as much a concern as the missile gap …

Image of Capitalism Slips to 54% in U.S.
Fifty-four percent of Americans, down from 60% in 2021, have a positive opinion of capitalism, while a steady 39% view socialism positively.

capitalism continues going great https://www.404media.co/buspatrol-put-ai-cameras-in-tens-of-thousands-of-school-buses-now-they-want-to-give-cops-access/?ref=mastodon

‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access
BusPatrol plans to scan the license plates of all vehicles the buses drive past, and then let law enforcement search that data. The plan would essentially turn school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles.

Sources: APEC, a derivatives exchange founded by the 22-year-old son of pro-crypto Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, raised $30M led by Lux at a $300M valuation (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/06/18/theodor

Exclusive: Son of pro-crypto New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand raises $30 million to launch a derivatives exchange
Lux Capital led the investment, which values the Stanford graduate’s exchange at $300 million.

A dozen memes (in a thread) of the foreign policy moment: capitulation, surrender, losing the war.
🧵 1 of 3
#USpol #Iran #kegseth

➡️ Anarchist Federation
#bookmarks

SoftBank says it is struggling to find startups in Latin America ready for major investments and has completed only two new deals over the past two years (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-…

Senator Cassidy had sharp words for Trump
Invited by Florida Sen. Rick Scott to speak at a GOP luncheon in the Capitol,
Trump had signaled ahead of time that he would use the closed-door meeting to push senators to pass his proof-of-citizenship voting bill.
But the conversation was more focused on Tuesday’s vote on war powers.
Most Republicans stayed quiet. But Cassidy stood up and defended his vote.
“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s…