Tootfinder

Tories and Lib Dems criticise Starmer’s ‘spinelessness’ after U-turn on digital ID
All very silly. The proposal is still in place, it's just that a biometric passport can be used as an alternative.
Pragmatic authoritarianism that still needs opposing.

1. This post is an incisive critique.
2. I’ve said before and I’ll say again that the only alternative to widespread popular violence is widespread empowerment through nonviolent mechanisms — not robbing people of power, that’s not an alternative, that’s a cause! — and if the oligarchs persist in their aggressive capture of power, Luigi Mangione is going to be not a curious aberration but a harbinger, and I don’t want that, I don’t actually want to live in a world where assassinations are a regular part of how things work, that’s miserable, that’s no way to live, and that’s exactly where we’re heading right now, and it’s grim and driving me to write egregious run-on sentences, please make it stop, thank you. https://wandering.shop/@aesthr/116381847228695045

Det här är ett väldigt bra podcastavsnitt/youtubeklipp kring kritiskt tänkande och skeptisism.
Antivaxxers, Acupuncture, And Alternative Cancer Cures | Dr. Steven Novella https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv1ZaJ9mL1k&t=2162s

Remains of the Real d’Artagnan May Have Been Found Under Church Altar – DNA Testing Underway https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/remains-of-the-real-dartagnan-may-have-been-found-under-church-altar-dna-testing-underway/

Remains of the Real d'Artagnan May Have Been Found Under Church Altar - DNA Testing Underway
Real name Charles de Batz de Castelmore, this close aid of the Sun King Louis XIV, who was killed during the siege of Maastricht

This becomes especially interesting when you understand the history of the church as a quasi-revolutionary organization. One could describe early church history as a mostly-successful attempt to overthrow the Roman empire. I say mostly successful because, in the end, the Roman state mutated the church for it's own ends and basically pulled a Lenin.
The early church was a religion of women and slaves that set up alternative institutions. See, the Roman economic system basically ran through the temples. Temples were basically the banks of their day (thus money changers in the temples and all that). So when the church set up their own institutions, they were actually attacking the economic system of the Roman empire. *That* is why the empire tried to destroy them. The Romans didn't really care about the gods. They would just mutate their beliefs to pull other pagans in. No, it wasn't about the gods. The Christian were fucking with the money.
The whole church as an institution was about dual power, and Paul (one of the early founders of the church) was central to organizing this into a political machine that could actually threaten the dominant order. One could argue that he saw the potential of the church, and used it to solidify his own power.
It all basically worked, right up until Constantine figured out how to flip the whole thing against the most radical elements. He had his people collect up different books of the Bible and modify them in such a way that it favored Rome. The trick here was to highlight the existing antisemitic threads of early church, and destroy the anti-Roman ones. Anti-authoritarian sects were killed as heretics, and centralized sects became aligned under the church.
This strategy of controlling internal dissent probably feels quite familiar. It's basically how the US works.
But this whole time, during the whole lead up to this, Christianity was illegal and it was continuing to grow as a system of dual power. When Romanism merged with Christianity, it created the most authoritarian institution in human history that brutally destroyed all opposition. Even still, several hundred years later it's power broke.
Today Liberalism has separated banking and the church, and has created the illusion of separation of church and state. But the same dual power strategy that allowed the first church to gain enough power to merge with the Roman power structure have now allowed Christian Nationalism to fully merge with Americanism into the Christian Fascism we see today...

"a new Gallup Poll reveals no significant change in the importance of religion to Americans. Plus, church attendance continues to plummet. The percentage of Americans who classify religion as “very important” in their lives is still flat since its 2021 report, at 47 percent."
Trump fails to 'bring back religion' as church attendance in America death spirals - Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org/trump-christianity/

If you missed it on Tim's blog, here it is again.
Long critical read on the #decoupling myth.
A response to Jonathan Aldred: On the tortuous relationship between GDP and macroecological footprints - resilience

A response to Jonathan Aldred: On the tortuous relationship between GDP and macroecological footprints
Is decoupling happening, yes, or no? And if not, could it ever happen? Over the course of a few weeks, The Guardian published several pieces on the topic that may appear contradictory, arguing both that “economic growth [is] no longer linked to carbon emissions” and that “economic growth is still heating up the planet.”

Die Unternehmen, die für die Plattformen die Altersverifizierung durchführen, sammeln mehr Daten als nötig wäre.
„Yoti “collects significant private information beyond what is strictly necessary to verify age” and that it “relies on sharing sensitive user information with several less user-visible fourth parties.”“
Das ist eins der zentralen Probleme der #SocialMediaVerbote

"...solar panels and wind turbines were being installed across the peninsula. These were presented as ecological alternatives and came with this narrative that if we accepted them we were saving the planet.
... on the one hand there was this environmental discourse, and on the other hand they were dispossessing us of our territory and deforesting it. How can a project be environmentally friendly if it’s clearing a huge area of land?"
Resisting the so-called 'Maya'…

Resisting the so-called 'Maya' Train | Latin America Bureau
Indigenous activist Haizel explains to LAB contributor Isàlia McIntyre how strengthening Maya identity supports resistance to megaprojects harming communities across the Yucután. Since 2018, the Maya Train – an intercity railway line designed for tourism and cargo transport – has expanded to over 1.500 kilometers of tracks across Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, including the states of Campeche, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Chiapas. The train, a flagship project of the previous admin…