Tootfinder

Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)

🍄 Mushrooms may have been part of early human diets: Primate study explores who eats what, and when
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-mushrooms-early-human-diets-primate.html

Mushrooms may have been part of early human diets: Primate study explores who eats what, and when
Mushrooms may not be the first food that comes to mind when we imagine the diets of wild primates—or our early human ancestors. We tend to think of fruits and green leaves as the preferred foods for monkeys and apes.

One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

Picture the human body. Zoom in on a single cell. It lives for a while, then splits or dies, as part of a community of cells that make up a particular tissue. This community lives together for many many cell-lifetimes, each performing their own favorite function and reproducing as much as necessary to maintain their community, consuming the essential resources they need and contributing back what they can so that the whole body can live for decades. Each community of cells is interdependent on the whole body, but also stable and sustainable over long periods of time.
Now imagine a cancer cell. It has lost its ability to harmonize with the whole and prioritize balance, instead consuming and reproducing as quickly as it can. As neighboring tissues start to die from its excess, it metastasizes, always spreading to new territory to fuel its unbalanced appetite. The inevitable result is death of the whole body, although through birth, that body can create a new fresh branch of tissues that may continue their stable existence free of cancer. Alternatively, radiation or chemotherapy might be able to kill off the cancer, at great cost to the other tissues, but permitting long-term survival.
To the cancer cell, the idea of decades-long survival of a tissue community is unbelievable. When your natural state is unbounded consumption, growth, and competition, the idea of interdependent cooperation (with tissues all around the body you're not even touching, no less) seems impossible, and the idea that a tissue might survive in a stable form for decades is ludicrous.
"Perhaps if conditions were bleak enough to perfectly balance incessant unrestrained growth against the depredations of a hostile environment it might be possible? I guess the past must have been horribly brutal, so that despite each tissue trying to grow as much as possible they each barely survived? Yes, a stable and sustainable population is probably only possible under conditions of perfectly extreme hardship, and in our current era of unfettered growth, we should rejoice that we live in much easier times!"
You can probably already see where I'm going with this metaphor, but did you know that there are human communities, alive today, that have been living sustainably for *tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years*?
#anarchy #colonialism #civilization
P.S. if you're someone who likes to think about past populations and historical population growth, I cannot recommend the (short, free) game Opera Omnia by Stephen Lavelle enough: https://www.increpare.com/2009/02/opera-omnia/

"The reality is that the views expressed in this US national security strategy are in many ways identical to the Russian viewpoints on Europe and the Russian goals of regime change in European countries." — @…
I think we should all consider the possibility that this may be because

New U.S. security strategy calls for regime change in Europe
In this video, I discuss the new U.S. national security strategy, which, to put it mildly, is concerning for Europe. It's largely a document about how the Trump administration sees it as a requirement for continued transatlantic cooperation that MAGA movements come to power in European countries. Watch the

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

Trump is very, very angry about a New York Times piece
that carefully documents his obvious physical decline.
Trump raged over the piece,
letting out a stream of lies about his performance in office
and even attacking the reporter who wrote the piece as ugly.
This may seem typical of Trump,
but we think it gets at something deeper.
Trump’s entire political mystique is premised on the fiction that he’s a strong, virile, formidable figure
who …

Transcript: Trump Fury Erupts at NYT as Mental Decline Visibly Worsens
As Trump’s rage at the paper of record reveals too much, the author of piece on Trump as “lame duck dictator” explains how devastating it is for him that his carefully-cultivated illusion of strength is collapsing.

"Look again at this small world. This is home. The only home we’ve ever known.
Every person who has ever lived. Every story ever told. Every love, every war, every sacrifice – it has all happened here on this tiny, drifting world.
And yet, we act as if there is another waiting for us. We carve borders into the land and fight over them. We build towers of wealth while others are left to starve.
We poison the water we drink, scorch the air we breathe and tear apart the very foundation of life, driven by the hunger for more, by the illusion of control.
We hold power over each other but not over the forces that could erase us in an instant. A rock adrift in space could end it all. A wave of fire from deep within the earth could rewrite the world in a single eruption. A burst of radiation from a distant sun could silence everything we’ve built.
In the face of the universe we are fragile beyond measure. Mere passengers on a planet that owes us nothing. And yet, we fight, we kill, we burn our home as if it were replaceable.
We act as though our time here is infinite. Though history has shown us otherwise. But for now this is all we have. Out there among the countless stars, there may be other worlds. Planets where life has taken root. Where others look up and wonder if they too are alone. But they are distant beyond our reach, beyond our time.
For the foreseeable future there is no second earth, no distant rescue. This is where we stand. This is where we make our living. What happens here, what we choose to destroy, what we choose to protect will echo long after we’re gone.
Think again how small we are. how brief our time is, how easily we could vanish. A fraction of a second in the lifespan of the universe, a blink in the endless dark. And yet in this fleeting moment we are here.
We love, we create, we shape the world around us. What we do with our time matters. Because in the end everything we leave behind is what we chose to built and who we chose to be. But for now we stand together on a mote of dust."
#Trance
#Techno
#AmbientTechno
#EnlusionLabel

On yesterday's Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else podcast, I talked about AI's impact on the environment and classrooms—and argued that it isn’t reinventing education so much as exposing bad habits we should’ve let go years ago https://www.link…

I think this may be the thing that truly kills the last embers of any passion I had for tech. I knew it was coming when I coined WYSIAYG (what you see is ALL you get) and here it is, only 40 some years later, and while services halting inexplicably is is a fact of computing, WYSIAYG means the software won't even try to explain, intelligent logging and troubleshooting wasn't in the Business Requirements because we all know software only ever works perfectly. If you really must know, use gdb.
It's like the old joke, spouse buys a parrot, leaves it as a surprise, arrives home to find it cooked for dinner; how could you, it spoke 12 languages! then it should have said something.

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

I've had a few of these thoughts stuck in my craw all day because I watched this liberal historian talk about the Galleanisti.
https://youtube.com/shorts/93yHEn8BYE4
Basically, she says that "of course the government had the right to target them." Then she goes on to talk about how it became an excuse to carry out a bunch of attacks on other marginalized people. Now, the Galleanisti had been bombing the houses of politicians and such. I get where she's coming from saying that one of their targets "was in the right" to try to catch them. But there's some context she's not talking about at all.
These were Italian anarchists, so they were not white and they were part of an already marginalized political group. Basically all of Europe and the US was trying to wipe out anarchists at the time. Meanwhile, the sitting president at the time showed the first movie in the White House. That movie was KKK propaganda, in which he was favorably quoted. The US was pretty solidly white supremacist in the 1920's.
Like... A major hidden whole premise of the game "Bioshock: Infinite" is that if you went back to the US in the 1920's, and you had magic powers, you would absolutely use them to kill as many cops as possible and try to destroy society. There's a lot of other stuff in there, I don't want to get distracted, but "fuck those racists," specifically referring to the US in the 1920's, was a major part of a major game.
Those Italian anarchists were also stone cutters. They carved grave stones. But the dust from that can kill you, much like black lung for coal miners. So they were dying from unsafe working conditions, regularly raising money to support dying coworkers and then carving gravestones for those same coworkers.
Now, I personally think insurrectionary anarchism is a dead end. I disagree with it as a strategy. We've seen it fail, and it failed there. But of course it makes sense that they wanted to blow up the government.
...And that's the correct way to structure that. When you say, "of course they were in the right" you're making a very clear political statement. You could easily say, "the cops in Vichy France had every right to hunt down the French Resistance." You would technically be correct, I guess. But it would really say something about your politics if you justified the actions of Nazi collaborators over those fighting against the Nazis.
And you may say, "oh, but the Nazis didn't have justification for anything. They invaded a sovereign nation, so their government wasn't legitimate anyway."
To which I would reply, "have you considered a history book about the US?"