@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot2025-11-23 14:53:26
"Arduino wasn’t valuable because it was just a microcontroller company. It was valuable because it was a commons. And you can’t apply enterprise legal frameworks to a commons without destroying it"
You also can't buy a #commons, at least without destroying it as a commons. The key point about a commons is that it isn't property.
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-15 20:50:35
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
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza2025-10-26 06:25:34
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-20 16:40:52
LangChain, whose open-source framework connects AI apps to real-time data, raised a $125M Series B led by IVP at a $1.25B valuation (Sharon Goldman/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/10/20/exclusive-early-ai-darling-lan…
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-17 16:05:44
The "People Over Billionaires" March Tours San Francisco's Ritziest Neighborhood
Activists assembled in Alta Plaza Park, San Francisco's billionaire epicenter, on November 15
for a rally and march to demand,
"housing, healthcare, and food for all," from the ultra-wealthy.
During the rally,
Socialists and Communists set up literature tables,
and people distributed kits containing a whistle and ICE reporting instructions.
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-20 08:05:15
Some leftists have criticized #NoKingsDay2 as useless. Though it was the largest protest in US history, it didn't change anything. I would go further to say that protests like these generally won't change anything. Dictators aren't forced to step down by 2% of the population coming out for one day. If they're forced to step down by protests, those protests are sustained. They are every single day. They are accompanied by general strikes.
We've been watching that happen all over the world. Portland in 2020 gave us a taste of that in the US. The George Floyd Rebellion was the type of resistance that actually brings down dictators like Trump. Occasional protests, no matter how large, can simply be ignored. That is precisely the reason the US developed a militarized police force in the first place. You need more, more than the largest protests in US history, more than Occupy, more than the resistance of the 60's and 70's, more than, and different from, anything we've seen in our lives.
And yet... Each protest has grown, and grown bolder. Some have grown more persistent. If you think of protest as the path to achieve change, you will lose. It is not. But it is a path to escalate. Some people, some otherwise comfortable white folks, came out for their first time. Some people got pepper sprayed for the first time. Some people questioned authority, stood up for the first time, and have had an experience that will radicalize them for the rest of their lives.
Protest is not useful in and of itself. It is training. It's making connections. Authoritarian regimes rely on the illusion of compliance, so visual resistance does actually undermine their power.
Liberals like to teach that non-violence is all about staying peaceful no matter what, that there's some way that morality simply overwhelms an enemy. I remember reading Langston Hughes' A Dream Deferred in high school. I said it was a threat. My teacher said, "you're wrong, he was a pacifist." Pacifism is a threat. If you can spit at me, beat me, shoot me, and I will not move, if I have the strength to absorb violence without flinching, without even rising to violence, what will happen when you push me too far?
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
For peaceful resistance to work, there must be ambiguity. It must not be clear if or when the resistance will stop being peaceful. Peaceful resistance with no possibility of escalation is just cowardice.
My critique then is not so harsh as some other anarchists. If you think that protest alone will work, you're probably going to lose. If you are prepared to escalate, if you are prepared to absorb violence without flinching, then it could be possible for protest alone to topple the dictator. The cracks are already beginning to show.
And then what?
The problems that lead to the George Floyd uprising were never resolved. The problems that lead to Occupy where never resolve. The DAPL was built, protesters were maimed, it leaked multiple times (exactly as predicted). Segregation never went away, it only changed forms. The fact that immigrants have different courts and different rights means that anyone can be arbitrarily kidnaped and renditioned to an arbitrary country. We never did anything about the torture black site. FFS, people can still be stripped of their voting rights and slavery is still legal in the US. The people who control both parties in the US are killing our children and grand children with oil wars and climate change.
Toppling the dictator does nothing to resolve all of the problems that existed before him.
No, #NoKingsDay was absolutely not useless. #NoKings and related protests are extremely useful but they aren't sufficient. But, I think we still need to challenge the movement on two points:
How do you escalate after you're ignored or brutalized?
What do you demand after you win?
#USPol
@compfu@mograph.social2025-10-14 13:22:46
Remember the Photoshop competitor that didn't require a monthly subscription? #AffinityPhoto
You can no longer download/purchase their software and they are giving away the iPad version for free until the end of the month. And they are teasing something "big" coming up with a bunch of marketing-speak. Whenever a company talks about freedom, be weary.
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social2025-10-11 13:45:28
Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Heliozoans are a group of amoeboid protists found commonly in both fresh and saltwater. They were termed sun-animalcules due to their spherical shape and distinctive radiating microtubules, which support axiopods used to capture food and facilitate movement. Some will also capture symbiotic algal cells which provide energy through photosynthesis. Heliozoa is &quo…
@nic@geno.social2025-11-06 22:16:48
“What the coming of the computer did, "just in time," was to make it unnecessary to create social inventions, to change the system in any way. So in that sense, the computer has acted as fundamentally a conservative force, which kept power or even solidified power where it already existed.” Joseph Weizenbaum, 1985
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-05 21:28:39
One of the Republican talking points during this shutdown is that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has been pulled left by the far left of his party,
but that is bullshit.
The force that is moving Democrats to fight is coming from the party itself,
and this is a reality that Republicans are loath to admit.
Democrats who are committed to fighting for healthcare in Congress
Include the centerists and moderates that Republicans have traditionally counted on …
