Tootfinder

The #IWW #GDC as an antifascist organization was always kind of a hack. It was a beautiful hack and it worked well for what it did.
In 2016, as Trump was rising, I found info from the Twin Cities GDC. They were super organized, building an amazing community defense organization. When we (Seattle) went to set up our chapter, following their lead, they were extremely supportive. When I got shot, Twin Cities folks were at my house keeping my partner safe. They literally flew people out to support us. They very much remain in my mind when I think about what mutual aid looks like.
Unionism is an important strategy of a larger fight. But it's important to realize that it's not the other way around. The GDC was built to defend the union, because there wasn't something larger to do that work. It filled a gap.
When we organized against Trump, we tried to make the GDC the greater thing. We tried to make the GDC into the vehicle for social revolution against the fascist threat... And it sort of worked. We were able to do a lot.
But that was never what it was built to do. It was always built as an appendage of the IWW. This contains its own problem. If Unionism is the revolutionary movement, then it becomes impossible to build a truly revolutionary society. Unionism centers "workers" which implicitly decenters those who can't work in the traditional sense (the young, the elderly, those physically or mentally able to work). It also decenters care labor that hasn't yet been widely commodified. Sure, there are all types of hacks to patch the holes, but the fundamental construction starts from the wrong assumptions.
It felt, for a while, like things could go another way. Like that our ability to bring members in could shift things a bit, maybe set the GDC on more equal footing with the core focus of the IWW. But that was always an illusion, far less important to think about than the crushing terror of the regime we were fighting.
Now, I will absolutely trash talk the IWW on occasion but in the end I do think they're doing good and important work. Any criticism I have should be taken with a grain of salt... And I know I do have a lot of salt. Again, Unionism is an important strategy. It's useful both in improving immediate material conditions and as part of the most powerful weapon we have against the capitalist system: the general strike. It's important, I can't say that enough. But it's not sufficient.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and I wonder if there are any other GDC organizers or former organizers who might be feeling the same. Feel free to DM me. I'd like to get some more perspectives and see if my understanding from several years ago deviates significantly from what other folks are feeling right now.
I'd also like to bounce some ideas around that come from my own organizing experience.

Composable logical gate error in approximate quantum error correction: reexamining gate implementations in Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill codes
Lukas Brenner, Beatriz Dias, Robert Koenig
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14658

Composable logical gate error in approximate quantum error correction: reexamining gate implementations in Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill codes
Quantifying the accuracy of logical gates is paramount in approximate error correction, where perfect implementations are often unachievable with the available set of physical operations. To this end, we introduce a single scalar quantity we call the (composable) logical gate error. It captures both the deviation of the logical action from the desired target gate as well as leakage out of the code space. It is subadditive under successive application of gates, providing a simple means for analy…

ProTip: Floofy gamer cats help you get a better score!

This is a really good question from @…. The first thing I keep telling everyone in other cities who wonders how they can help, what they can do:
Get organized NOW. Meet your neighbors NOW. Get your neighbors set up with secure messaging NOW. Form multiple hyper-local neighborhood social groups NOW. Organize a block picnic or community craft night or repair workshop or whatever NOW. Get contact info for the human beings who physically show up for neighborhood events NOW.
Form all those local connections ASAP, so that they’re there when you need them. The hardest lines of communication to establish will be the ones with the people closest to you. If you get local lines open in advance, you’ll be in a far, far better place.
https://infosec.exchange/@mathaetaes/115731104851949153

Diese Woche geht’s – na klar – um die Wurst. 🍖 Unsere Wurst springt durch die EU, ärgert sich über blinkende Autos, schaut Politikern beim Streiten zu – und erklärt, warum man nicht in jedes Würstchen beißen sollte, das die AfD uns hinhält. Klingt verrückt? Ist es auch. 👉 Die ganze Wochenschau und mehr Hintergründe: auf meinem Blog!
#wurst

Couldn’t make it to a No Kings protest today because I was flying home from Atlanta. So now I’m just perusing pictures from various cities and dear god this one is savage 💀

How men imagine getting their scars:
• fighting ferocious beasts
• saving maidens from harm
• doing daring things
How men actually get their scars:
• slipping on the mud
• hitting their leg against the table while cleaning
• walking with their hands too close to thorny bushes
• possibly, playing with ferocious beasts of the species felis catus

De schaduwoorlog van Rusland in de EU gaat door met sabotage acties aan Pools spoor richting Oekraine: “We are dealing with the [intelligence] services of a foreign state, and not a gang of scrap metal thieves.” https://www.

Hat Tiktok unsere Jugend verdummt, fragt @… ? Ich bin voll dafür, die Gen Z für mündig zu halten. Sie kann und wird gute Entscheidungen treffen. Als Journalistin und als Blogger haben wir keine andere Wahl. Denn wenn wir unser Publikum für ignorant, News-Fast-Food-süchtig und von Algorithmen ferngesteuert halten, können wir unseren Job genausogut an den Nagel h…

My body is a machine that turns cats into kissed cats. 💋