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.

Oh, how glad I am that I told Claude (command-line version) about `rename -n`. Seeing it iterate over half a dozen different regex patterns that might do what I wanted it to do, but were not quite right … lucky it could spot its errors before running the real thing.

Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing.
-- The Mad Dogtender

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."

Sometimes hacking a computer means a whole different thing...
In this use, I'm actually hacking (with a hacksaw) the case apart to add an I/O shield (custom made) so I can fit an older motherboard that was not designed for this case.
And thank you to Gateway for making me do this by not using a removable shield and instead stamping every hole they needed and covering them with a sticker if they weren't on this model. 🤦‍♂️

Any guy going "I'll block you if you do x"...
you are on my blocklist right now.
No goddamn threats.
Be a gangster someplace else!
I've been that guy and if you blocked me back then, well played!
You did the right thing!
We don't block people.
We block attitudes!
For fun, you can block me because of this post!
#ToughTalk

Home Insulation Works: Barriers to Installation (2023) - Doing the right thing is hard, and insurers do not help! #insulation #netZero #futureReady -

Home Insulation Works: Barriers to Installation (2023)
Doing the right thing is hard, and insurers do not help! #insulation #netZero #futureReady

Lord Whitehead: ➡️ Stick to the Science, Inform the Public, Take Action. #climate

TL;DR: spending money to find the cause of autism is a eugenics project, and those resources could have been spent improving accommodations for Autistic people instead.
To preface this, I'm not Autistic but I'm neurodivergent with some overlap.
We need to be absolutely clear right now: the main purpose is *all* research into the causes of autism is eugenics: a cause is sought because non-autistic people want to *eliminate* autistic people via some kind of "cure." It should be obvious, but a "cured autistic person" who did not get a say in the decision to administer that "cure" has been subjected to non-consensual medical intervention at an extremely unethical level. Many autistic people have been exceptionally clear that they don't want to be "cured," including some people with "severe autism" such as people who are nonverbal.
When we think things like "but autism makes life so hard for some people," we're saying that the difficulties in their life are a result of their neurotype, rather than blaming the society that punished & devalues the behaviors that result from that neurotype at every turn. To the extent that an individual autistic person wants to modify their neurotype and/or otherwise use aids to modify themselves to reduce difficulties in their life, they should be free to pursue that. But we should always ask the question: "what if we changed their social or physical environment instead, so that they didn't have to change themselves?" The point is that difficulties are always the product of person x environment, and many of the difficulties we attribute to autism should instead be attributed to anti-autistic social & physical spaces, and resources spent trying to "find the cause of autism" would be *much* better spent trying to develop & promote better accommodations for autism. Or at least, that's the case if you care about the quality of life of autistic people and/or recognize their enormous contributions to society (e.g., Wikipedia could not exist in anything near its current form without autistic input). If instead you think of Autistic people as gross burdens that you'd rather be rid of, then it makes sense to investigate the causes of autism so that you can eventually find a "cure."
All of that to say: the best response to lies about the causes of autism is to ask "What is the end goal of identifying the cause?" instead of saying "That's not true, here's better info about the causes."
#autism #trump
P.S. yes, I do think about the plight of parents of autistic kids, particularly those that have huge struggles fitting into the expectations of our society. They've been put in a position where society constantly bullies and devalues their kid, and makes it mostly impossible for their kid to exist without constant parental support, which is a lot of work and which is unfair when your peers get the school system to do a massive amount of childcare. But in that situation, your kid is in an even worse position than you as the direct victim of all of that, and you have a choice: are you going to be their ally against the unfair world, or are you going to blame them and try to get them to confirm enough that you can let the school system take care of them, despite the immense pain that that will provoke? Please don't come crying for sympathy if you choose the later option (and yes, helping them be able to independently navigate society is a good thing for them, but there's a difference between helping them as their ally, at their pace, and trying to force them to conform to reduce the burden society has placed on you).

This is the right and proper thing to do. I need to contact my Congress critters (both house, which impeaches, and senate, which has a trial) to tell 'em to support this...
The 2nd URL below is a link to the actual text of the House resolution to impeach.
"Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens Introduces Articles of Impeachment Against RFK Jr. "

Never let saying the right thing get in the way of getting the power to do the right thing.

Why the Cowboys should ignore Richard Sherman and do the right thing with George Pickens https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/dallas-cowboys/news/why-cowboys-should-ignore-richard-sherman-an…

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

'writing is more than just the process by which you obtain a piece of text, right? it's also about finding out what you wanted to say in the first place, and how you wanted to say it. this post existed in my head first as a thought, then it started to gel into words, and then i tried pulling those words out to arrange them in a way that (hopefully) gets my point across. ... i alone can get the thought out and writing is how i do that.'

This article about a liberal reporter dating MAGA men really shows some of the core of what's breaking this world right now. And it's not just the US. Men are not okay. Like at all.
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/love-sex/rela…

Yes, There Are Some National Guard Willing To Do The Right Thing | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/30/yes-there-are-some-national-guard-willing-to-do-the-right-thing/

An excellent summary here via @… about how the structures of our civil society have failed to stop ICE from becoming Trump’s Brownshirts.
The one thing the piece omits: someone •is• stopping ICE. It’s the citizens filling the streets, honking and shouting and filming and generally harassing ICE, doing the work our government has failed to do. If it were not for that response being so widespread, sustained, and forceful, we’d be in far worse place right now. https://mastodon.social/@AnnaAnthro/115616389777857234

Now Kurzgesagt are doing an "AI is killing the Internet" thing.
There have been many of these lately from a lot of serious and "Internet famous" sources. All of them have much the same take as I do: Right now we're heading into a "dustbowl" of "AI slop", but there are actual valid uses that don't get a lot of press.
This overuse is a byproduct of the AI "gold rush" where a number of excessively funded companies are pushing o…

The best thing is the big Volvo machine. Trump is not even able to do the (de)construction with US-build machinery? What a loser
https://mstdn.social/@jstatepost/115419867564846000

On Making Christmas Greener - Twelve top tips that the Internet gave to me - for a green Xmas... Have fun, save money, do the right thing by the planet - triple win! #greenXmas - https://www.earth.org.uk/note…

On Making Christmas Greener
Twelve top tips that the Internet gave to me - for a green Xmas... Have fun, save money, do the right thing by the planet - triple win! #greenXmas

Let’s just get one thing straight: There is nothing Israel cannot do today. Israel could shoot Palestinian babies on live TV to a laugh track and not one so-called democracy, not one so-called civilised, Western country would raise a single hand to stop them.
Israel has laid bare the moral vacuity of “Western civilisation” and those oft-lauded “European values”. Bullshit all.
We are naught but barbarians, allowing a live-streamed genocide to happen right before our eyes.
Th…

Newsom chides USC to 'do the right thing' for academic freedom and resist Trump compact (Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-10-03/newsom-usc-trump-campus-university-compact
http://www.memeorandum.com/251003/p142#a251003p142

Had a magnetic mounting plate for a smoke detector that was glued to the ceiling and no longer in use after I got a new smoke detector.
And since it was annoying and ugly, and next to a moon lamp, there was only one thing I could realistically do, right?
3D print a Saturn V rocket and attach it with magnets.
#3dprinting

I've always been a critic of "Stoicism for the military" events and talks. I think the military often abuses a philosophy whose core aspects include cosmopolitanism and that pushes people to do the right thing, especially against power.
But I am ready to be proved wrong by all the guys filling Ryan Holiday's rooms, standing up for "justice" against bombing fishermen in the Caribbean.
Any minute now.

"As Joy-Ann Reid put it in an Instagram video: “Dear retailers who’ve decided you don’t like diversity, equity, and inclusion, or you really love ICE and you have no problem with them busting into your establishments to drag people away: Here’s the thing. We ain’t buying it. I mean, for real, for real, we ain’t buyin’ it.”
She explained: “We’re gonna spend our money with businesses who actually respect our dollars, respect our communities, and respect our diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are going to buy from people who respect immigrants, who respect immigrants’ rights, and respect freedom and liberty. We are going to buy from establishments that respect our right to vote and our right to live in a free society. And if you ain’t that, we ain’t buying it.”
“Let’s show them our power,” she told listeners. “Let’s show them what we can do together.”"
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/november-25-2025

I feel like this Stop Copaganda project from 2024 didn't get enough love. It certainly made me reflect on how I portray law enforcement. Particularly in Domestic Threats. Some police officers/agents are really trying to do the right thing and the system makes it hard. Some of them just do what they're told because they trust the system, without realizing they might be doing more harm than good. Some are more interested in getting status or power than worrying about morality. These st…

Seriously, what a breath of fresh air.
It's not a 'Verse. I don't have to have watched all the Marvel movies to know what the fuck is going on. It's not based on a comic book. There's no antiheroes. Each episode is its own self-contained story. People do the right thing.
Cannot recommend more highly. https://

On Making Christmas Greener - Twelve top tips that the Internet gave to me - for a green Xmas... Have fun, save money, do the right thing by the planet - triple win! #greenXmas - https://m.earth.org.uk/note-on-…

On Making Christmas Greener
Twelve top tips that the Internet gave to me - for a green Xmas... Have fun, save money, do the right thing by the planet - triple win! #greenXmas

I'm getting about 3 emails a day right now from my university all "reminding" me to do the exact same thing. This is not uncommon. And they wonder why folks don't keep up with their email.

In light of "Antifa" being designated a "terrorist organization," a (very mildly) good thing that anyone can do is say publicly: "I am antifa."
Antifa is *already* a decentralized non-organization, but throwing up enough chaff that dragnet "surveillance" of online spaces becomes useless is a good thing. I promise you really don't want to live in the world in which whoever the president considers "antifa" has been hunted down and locked up, but thankfully, the president doesn't have the resources to make that happen without lots of local police cooperation. Local police are generally champing at the bit to bash leftists under the flimsiest of pretexts and already have programs doing undercover surveillance of leftist spaces, but they also don't want to look like fools or be mocked by their communities, so a strong public response indicating sympathy for and/or real solidarity with "antifa" could influence things right now.
#Antifa

My brain seems to have two modes:
1. time-unaware, that slightly chaotic relaxed flow state where I just do the next thing that feels right
2. time-aware, which is always a bit tense and stressful because I need to force myself to keep to a calendar, and execute tasks in specific times.

Gee, ATT - this paragon of responsibility - wants to use a diesel generator as emergency back u p- creating noise and air quality issues on a regular because it needs to be tested on a regular basis.
AND SF has an all-electric new construction ordinance - why shouldn't that apply here? (yes, I get the ordinance applies to buildings and this isn't a building - legal quibbles to allow big corps to do damage, rather than the right thing.)
At a minimum, I think appealing on…

Neighborhood finds it's hard to fight AT&T - 48 hills
Planners approve 104-foot tower in Diamond Heights over broad community opposition

Gee, ATT - this paragon of responsibility - wants to use a diesel generator as emergency back u p- creating noise and air quality issues on a regular because it needs to be tested on a regular basis.
AND SF has an all-electric new construction ordinance - why shouldn't that apply here? (yes, I get the ordinance applies to buildings and this isn't a building - legal quibbles to allow big corps to do damage, rather than the right thing.)
At a minimum, I think appealing on…

Neighborhood finds it's hard to fight AT&T - 48 hills
Planners approve 104-foot tower in Diamond Heights over broad community opposition

On Making Christmas Greener - Twelve top tips that the Internet gave to me - for a green Xmas... Have fun, save money, do the right thing by the planet - triple win! #greenXmas - https://m.earth.org.uk/note-on-…

On Making Christmas Greener
Twelve top tips that the Internet gave to me - for a green Xmas... Have fun, save money, do the right thing by the planet - triple win! #greenXmas

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #DonLettsCultureClashRadio
Redhead Kingpin and the F.B.I.:
🎵 Do the Right Thing
#RedheadKingpinandtheFBI
https://editlab.bandcamp.com/track/redhead-kingpin-the-f-b-i-do-the-right-thing-revibelab
https://open.spotify.com/track/195CWBcm83Kb8NhpBt4ARG

I've always been a critic of "Stoicism for the military" events and talks. I think the military often abuses a philosophy whose core aspects include cosmopolitanism and that pushes people to do the right thing, especially against power.
But I am ready to be proved wrong by all the guys filling Ryan Holiday's rooms, standing up for "justice" against bombing fishermen in the Caribbean.
Any minute now.

Home Insulation Works: Barriers to Installation (2023) - Doing the right thing is hard, and insurers do not help! #insulation #netZero #futureReady -

Home Insulation Works: Barriers to Installation (2023)
Doing the right thing is hard, and insurers do not help! #insulation #netZero #futureReady

While I'm not much for the law, I recognize that not everyone I talk to thinks the same way. But even if you are like me, the enormity of the list of Trump's crimes is just staggering. There really couldn't be any more clear of an illustration of the fact that there are two legal systems: one for the elite, and one for everyone else.
We all know #Trump just does crimes all the time, but it can be hard to track the enormity of it. The YouTube lawyer LegalEagle put together a list and it's pretty incredible. It's a little over 40 minutes of him rapidly listing times that Trump has violated the law during his second term (completely ignoring his first term).
#MassBlackout is a #Boycott of the American corporations that support the dictatorship. By showing
that people have the power to shut down the economy if elites don't listen, we can hit them where it actually hurts.
From now until December 2nd, do as many of these things as you can:
- Stop online or in-store shopping (except for small businesses)
- Stop work
- Stop streaming, cancel subscriptions, no digital purchases
This is one of the few times that boosting stuff on social media and doing nothing else actually *can* make a difference. Boost posts tagged with #WeAintBuyingIt, #MassBlackout, and #BlackOutTheSystem. Make sure everyone you know knows about it. Hold each other accountable to keep from spending. You may already not be spending because.... well,.. Trump has already made everything too expensive. The thing is that elites can't actually tell the difference. Spreading word, making the protest seem as big and impactful as possible is all that's really needed to fracture elites and turn them against each other. Boost, write your own post, make these tags trend on every platform you can, then do nothing.
Don't buy things, (if you can) don't work. Just stop. Refuse to participate in capitalism. This is the ultimate "fuck you, make me" because they absolutely can't make you. This is the ultimate reminder of where power actually comes from.
I've been trying to remind everyone, every day. Please do the same. Keep this opportunity at the top of everyone's mind. Keep it in your mind.
Trump is more vulnerable now than he's ever been, and there is no time in the next year that we have more power than right now. This is one of the most important parts of the year for the US economy. What you do, or don't do, right now has more of an impact than any other time.
#USPol #BlackFriday #CyberMonday