Tootfinder

Two photos of Mt. Bogong, one just after sunset and one around noon. I’m now sold on visiting the high plains in Spring. #straya #hiking #bushwalking

I keep coming back to the mirror dualities of the oppressed and oppressor under authoritarianism.
The oppressed is portrayed as both weak and godlike. The stereotypes are always some variation on sloth and incompetence, but yet somehow also a menace capable of destroying the "pure" society. To use the most relevant current example, Antifa being both little femme soy boys who would always get beat up by "real men" while also being an international terrorist organization on the brink of overthrowing the US government, the unarmed presence of whom makes the heavily armed agents of ICE flee for their lives. Antifa is both having absolutely no impact on ICE, and also having such an impact on ICE that the military needs to come in to protect them. The contradiction is obvious but never seems to occur to those who hold both to be true at the same time.
But few talk about the duality of the oppressor. The sovereign throughout history has always been both a ruler above the law, sometimes even the representative or incarnation of a divine force. Yet, this same superhuman/god-man is also a baby who needs constant care. This is absolutely a through line from the very earliest records of sovereign cults to modern cult leaders, CEOs, and Trump today. Power, for these people, is expressed both as the ability to force others to enact their will and in the ability to compel others to care for them. Can any of these "men" cook? Can they fix anything themselves? They are driven everywhere, cooked for all the time, constantly protected from danger. Kings are still dressed, at least for rituals. I could dissect masculinity here, but that's a whole thing.
It is as though the drive to care for our children, who must be taught to behave within acceptable norms, is hijacked by "leaders" who demand our care and attention... even at the expense of our literal children. And recently we've seen some of those very CEOs, with LLMs and return to office demands, show that their judgment is also little better than children, making decisions while pretending to understand a subject.
The oppressed are portrayed as both god-like and impotent and are, in fact, neither. Meanwhile the rulers portray themselves only as invulnerable and are, in fact, childish in their ability to survive without constant support. Their greatest fear from the collapse of society is figuring out how to make sure people keep taking care of them.
It just keeps rattling around in my head.
#USPol

Global smartphone shipments in 2026 are set to shrink 2.1% due to rising memory costs, led by Chinese OEMs; DRAM price surges are set to raise costs by 10%-15% (Counterpoint Research)
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/in

Finally getting around to watching The Diplomat.
It has the ever delightful Rufus Sewell in it so of course I'm watching it.
#TheDiplomat #TV
https://www.…

The Diplomat (TV Series 2023– ) ⭐ 8.0 | Drama, Thriller
50m | TV-MA

topology: Internet AS graph (2004)
An integrated snapshot of the structure of the Internet at the level of Autonomous Systems (ASs), reconstructed from multiple sources, including the RouteViews and RIPE BGP trace collectors, route servers, looking glasses, and the Internet Routing Registry databases. This snapshot was created around October 2004.
This network has 34761 nodes and 171403 edges.
Tags: Technological, Communication, Unweighted, Multigraph, Timestamps

There's a word at the beginning and end of Dawn of Everything that feels self-referential right now: Kairos.
> We began this book with a quote which refers to the Greek notion of kairos as one of those occasional moments in a society’s history when its frames of reference undergo a shift – a metamorphosis of the fundamental principles and symbols, when the lines between myth and history, science and magic become blurred – and, therefore, real change is possible. Philosophers sometimes like to speak of ‘the Event’ – a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic masterpiece – that is, a breakthrough which reveals aspects of reality that had previously been unimaginable but, once seen, can never be unseen. If so, kairos is the kind of time in which Events are prone to happen.
> Societies around the world appear to be cascading towards such a point. This is particularly true of those which, since the First World War, have been in the habit of calling themselves ‘Western’. On the one hand, fundamental breakthroughs in the physical sciences, or even artistic expression, no longer seem to occur with anything like the regularity people came to expect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet at the same time, our scientific means of understanding the past, not just our species’ past but that of our planet, has been advancing with dizzying speed. Scientists in 2020 are not (as readers of mid-twentieth-century science fiction might have hoped) encountering alien civilizations in distant star systems; but they are encountering radically different forms of society under their own feet, some forgotten and newly rediscovered, others more familiar, but now understood in entirely new ways.
Reading this as I write something very inspired by this work feels especially serendipitous, especially at this time. When they wrote the book, I think that kairos felt more serendipitous itself. But as the frequency of opportunity increases, the veil between realities feels more malleable... that perhaps we can poke a finger through and open a portal to a completely different future than the one we've felt locked into for such a long time.
https://anarchoccultism.org/building-zion/the-coordinated-swarm-lyhr

The Psychology Sisters
Two professionals on a quest to normalise the dialogue around mental health...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/the-psychology-sisters/

topology: Internet AS graph (2004)
An integrated snapshot of the structure of the Internet at the level of Autonomous Systems (ASs), reconstructed from multiple sources, including the RouteViews and RIPE BGP trace collectors, route servers, looking glasses, and the Internet Routing Registry databases. This snapshot was created around October 2004.
This network has 34761 nodes and 171403 edges.
Tags: Technological, Communication, Unweighted, Multigraph, Timestamps

topology: Internet AS graph (2004)
An integrated snapshot of the structure of the Internet at the level of Autonomous Systems (ASs), reconstructed from multiple sources, including the RouteViews and RIPE BGP trace collectors, route servers, looking glasses, and the Internet Routing Registry databases. This snapshot was created around October 2004.
This network has 34761 nodes and 171403 edges.
Tags: Technological, Communication, Unweighted, Multigraph, Timestamps