Tootfinder

My almost 4 year old wakes us up yelling: I need to go potty, but I have a banana in my hand.
My partner: put the banana on the table and go to the potty
My almost 4 year old: ok!
Problem solving
#kidposting

It's up to Americans to stop him now. The entire world needs this to be over. I honestly hope we make it to the other side.

The fascist who killed Heather Heyer at Unite the Right helped turn the tides against the last Trump administration. He said there were "very fine people on both sides." The resistance grew, antifa doxxing fascists started getting those fash fired.
But some of those fash didn't stop. They kept organizing their terror cells. The fash who killed Heyer was with a group called Vanguard America. Patriot Front is a Nazi group that split off from Vanguard America. They started terrorizing people by loading up in box trucks and piling out for spontaneous marches.
That box truck tactic probably sounds familiar. Patriot Front basically disappeared at the same time that ICE started recruiting hard.
Let me make it more clear. The very same Nazis from UTR who killed Heather Heyer, who Trump called "very fine people," are now employees of DHS. They've been carrying out the ethnic cleansing they always dreamed of, and they're being paid by the government, *with your tax dollars*, to do it. And now, just like in Charlottesville, they've murdered an unarmed protestor.
This feels similar because it is. These are the same people killing daughters and mothers. Killing unarmed protestors, out of rage not fear, then lying and claiming self defense. This is the same tactic it's always been. This is the same thing they've always done.
It seems like we may have reached the Heather Heyer point of this administration early with Renee Good. Now would be a good time for everyone to get into the streets and stay there until this is over. Everyone turned the tides before, and now he's so much weaker.
This can all be over if we fight like hell to end it.
#USPol

Though a lot of that same calculus could also kick in around Minnesota.

The US military has always had a massive global advantage against enemies by having bases all over the world. There are bases in every NATO country. This would appear to be a powerful threat to anyone willing to oppose American hegemon, and under normal conditions it would be.
But a lot of those kids serving on those bases joined, not because they love America but, because they needed a ticket out of poverty. They joined for the education, for the money, maybe a bit for the adventure, but, more than anything, to escape the ghetto or podunk backwater that trapped them. Under normal times, this is the best deal they could expect. Maybe they risk their lives, usually they sit around being bored for a few years, and they get to come out with respect and paid college.
But what they are being offered is normal in most of the countries they're stationed in. Free healthcare, cheap or free education, is just what citizens in a lot of countries have come to expect. If the US attacked a NATO country, how many would snap up citizenship if they were given a chance to defect? Bonus points for taking some hardware with you, I'm sure.
But there are some who love their country. There are some patriotic Americans on those bases. Some of them joined specifically to protect the US from all enemies, foreign *and* domestic. Given a chance to fulfill that oath or violate international law, what happens?
There are a good number of former military folks too who now are unsafe in the countries they served, who would do just about anything for citizenship in any EU country and almost any NATO ally. Some of those folks know things they swore an oath to never share, but the country they swore an oath to has betrayed them. Today there's no value in leaking those secrets, but in a war between the US and NATO allies things would be different. Some of those former military folks still believe in their oath, and know exactly who the real enemy is. What happens when there's a real threat of war, when they can use their knowledge to fulfill that oath to protect the US against those domestic threats?
There are a bunch of civilian tech workers who have become targets of the regime. Some of them had clearance, or know about the skeletons in the closet. They know about critical infrastructure, classified systems, all sorts of things that would be extremely valuable to an opponent. But the opponents of the US have always been a frightening *other*, never familiar societies these folks look up to, have visited, have thought about moving to, are trying to escape to.
All I'm saying here is that invading Venezuela and kidnapping the president has a very different calculus than does attacking Greenland. I don't know if Trump or his people are able to understand that, but if he and his folks aren't then I hope European leaders are. But more than that, I hope it never comes down to finding out.
But perhaps we should all think about what we would do to make sure things ended quickly if American leadership ever made such an incredible mistake.

I'm pretty sure I saw this here, clicked on the video, and then went back to boost/comment and I couldn't find it again. If anyone has a link to the original post, please link

Graeber was right.
https://youtu.be/X035QqagO00

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Hex City:
🎵 Out of Place
#HexCity
https://open.spotify.com/track/0EBbuoMaSo2LsTkhij2136

»`Uint8Array.prototype.toHex()`
The toHex() method of Uint8Array instances returns a hex-encoded string based on the data in this Uint8Array object.«
I've only just discovered this and I think it's a cool new feature in JavaScript. I am now surprised when almost all users have up-to-date web browsers in order to use it easily in the frontend WebDev.
🧑‍💻

Uint8Array.prototype.toHex() - JavaScript | MDN
The toHex() method of Uint8Array instances returns a hex-encoded string based on the data in this Uint8Array object.

I feel like I've been cursed by a witch with a hex that grows my forehead an inch for every video meeting I join.

After 20 years, bottom brackets can get a little stiff. M8x1mm holds the tool on.

Node v25 is here!
https://github.com/nodejs/node/releases/tag/v25.0.0

Release 2025-10-15, Version 25.0.0 (Current), @RafaelGSS · nodejs/node
Node.js 25 is here! We have upgraded V8 to 14.1, bringing major JSON.stringify performance improvements, built-in Uint8Array base64/hex conversion, and ongoing WebAssembly and JIT pipeline optimiza...

Oh hey, this is relevant to all the folks struggling with building community:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Xl6dhDV3Q

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6MusicArtistInResidence
Sister Grotto:
🎵 Hex
#SisterGrotto
https://heavenmetal.bandcamp.com/track/hex
https://open.spotify.com/track/1xq5NV7GxNleoY3kek6hsT

Any Nederlanders please feel free to correct me. I'm still very much getting a handle on all this.

@borkdude, in your 'scittle with additional libraries' files, you have, for each file in the library, a line
SHADOW_ENV.evalLoad( <filename>, <boolean>, <???>);
where ??? is a string of JS source code with some punctuation replaced by hex codes.
The second last line appears to invoke the file itself (recursively!?!), and the last is always
SHADOW_ENV.evalLoad("shadow.module.<filename>.append.js", false, <???>);
Wha…

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

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Ex Hex:
🎵 Rainbow Shiner
#ExHex
https://exhexband.bandcamp.com/track/rainbow-shiner
https://open.spotify.com/track/7r5xiobhzMJul4E0pVNu4g

Adding another post. This one is a bit less polished, but I want to get it out. As things get harder for everyone, I'm seeing a greater tendency to want to grasp onto revolutionary fiction such as #Andor. I think there's value in that, but it has to come with an informed critique.
> We are so thirsty for hope that we will drink it up, even when that hope comes from a fiction and the truth behind the hope is poison. In Andor, we see the worst elements sacrifice themselves for some of the best. The revolution goes through a process of purification, the complicated elements weeding themselves out to make room for the simplified good, as the rebellion unifies. In reality, this tends to be the opposite how things actually work.
> [...]
> [The Urban Guerilla movement of the 60's through the 80's] centered militant revolution. In doing so, they omitted or cut themselves off from the logistic support needed to sustain such revolutionary activity. The trauma of carrying out violence further isolated and radicalized them. Lacking infrastructure for trauma healing, their decay escalated and became unrecoverable. Ultimately, their revolutionary movements both emulated and reinforced the status quo they were trying to resist.
> There emerges a strange historical parallel that is difficult to see from within the dominant paradigm. The competitive politics of electoralism derives from heroic competition, where people (typically men) compete (often violently) for control over a territory or people. Thus the insurrectionary enters into the very same competition as a challenger, not against the system of domination but for control over it. The success of the revolution, then, does not abolish the system of violent domination but changes rather replaces its management.
> Many modern anarchists will be quick to point out the disconnect between ends and means. While authoritarian projects often assert that "the ends justify the means," and Andor implies the same, anti-authoritarian projects assert the ends and the means are not only united but are, in fact, the same.
This is still very much something I'm actively editing, but I'd still love feedback to help me refine it to it's final form. Typo catches and clarifying questions welcome.
#USPol

I'm especially interested in a few things if anyone is willing to help...
1) missing words and simple typos - My ADHD brain skips words coming out and fulls them in when reading, so it's easy for me to make mistakes and hard for me to catch them.
2) questions - I tend to work from a lot of assumed knowledge, collected from all over, and I'm really trying to make my work more accessible. I assume I'm talking about a bunch of stuff most folks don't know, but I don't know which of them come from some rabbit hole I went down and which are more common knowledge.
3) challenges - I get bored when having things explained to me so I have a tendency to keep explanations light... Which can mean I leave out a bunch of critical context or logical steps.

As a security engineer, whenever anyone talks about a control it's always important to ask "by what mechanism?"
> "Oh, that can't happen because we have a system to stop it."
By what mechanism?
> "We have documentation that says...."
Yeah, that's not a mechanism.
People keep saying, "Trump can't do that!" But like... by what mechanism?
> "The constitution says..."
Yeah... a documented list of rules is not self-enforcing. What is the mechanism?
What makes this impossible? Oh, it's possible under certain conditions? Oh, it's always possible and you're completely relying on the idea that there will never be a malicious actor? Yeah, that's gonna get exploited. Oh shit, now you're owned.
What do you do with a system that's completely owned? Once it's compromised it can never be trusted again. What would you tell a client who told you, "Patching is really hard, so we're just gonna ban the attacker's IP."
What, you're not even gonna reinstall?
I assume we've all had the "burn everything down and start again" client. I wonder how many of us thought we would see the US government ask for them to hold it's beer.
#USPol

On Few-Distance Sets in the Plane
Lucas Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09800 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09800

On Few-Distance Sets in the Plane
Let $g(k)$ be the maximum size of a planar set that determines at most $k$ distances. We prove $$\fracπ{3\,C(Λ_{hex})}\ k\sqrt{\log k} (1+o(1)) \le g(k) \le C k\log k,$$ so $g(k) \asymp k\sqrt{\log k}$ with an explicit constant from the hexagonal lattice. For any arithmetic lattice $Λ$ we show $$g_Λ(k)\ge (π/4) S^*(Λ) k\sqrt{\log k} (1+o(1)).$$ We also give quantitative stability: unless $X$ is line-heavy or has two popular nonparallel shifts, either almost all ordered pairs lie below a h…

I had a dream last night that folks started using drones to track ICE, which then forced them to roll out jammers before raids, which then allowed people to use radio triangulation to find out where ICE was going to raid... which all makes me think that I may need to stop watching Civ Div videos before bed.
Edit:
...for anyone not familiar with Civ Div: https://youtube.com/@civdiv

I've been working on a bit of a larger project. It is still very much a work in progress. It's an attempt to combine blog and mastodon posts with other things I've written in the past, along with some original analysis, into a zine. I'm probably about 2/3 of the way through.
It's primarily focused on political theory and critique, which, I think, deviates a bit from how a lot of other folks view the world. It's pretty explicitly anarchist, though I don't think I've actually put the word "anarchism" or referenced the ideology anywhere so explicitly.
I'd love feedback (especially around editing and flow) if anyone would be willing to put eyes on it and tell me what they think:
https://anarchoccultism.org/building-zion/

The American Democratic Party, and the concept of "Democratic Socialism" within the US, comes largely from an authoritarian political tradition where the state offers services in exchange for the population allowing elites to continue parasitize the system. Then it is critical for Liberals to consume and destroy popular mutual aid, because real mutual aid undermines their carrot.
Democrats tend to imagine that anarchists want to destroy "all the good things" that governments do. The reality is that we want to build those good things ourselves so that we can reject the offer of those same good things, less well managed, with all the bad things attached.
Anarchists want to build pro-social systems (what if we didn't *need* snap, but just made sure everyone was fed?) while eliminating anti-social ones (do we really *need* to kidnap children, or could we just kind of stop doing that?).

#BurnDownTheDatacenters
CW: Video references non-specific AI generated CSAM and fash propaganda
https://youtu.be/YJGv6jkPZGY

Even if the oligarchs pull back, all that tells them is that they need to slow down. This has all been a long time in the making, and if you don't believe me then go look up "the business plot."

Not everyone agrees...
https://youtube.com/shorts/gcO8dHeKjU0
But I think this assessment may overestimate the competence of the administration (they won't just crash things because their heads are just that full of shit), and may underestimate the ability of the administration (or really, the heritage foundation or other fash planners) to just make some shit up work around any limitation. The use of private donations on the ballroom and to fund military ops is a pretty clear test of that.
No matter what, the government will be shut down. All the things you care about will either be eliminated right now, or slowly over time. That's been happening since the 70's, and even faster since the 90's, so it shouldn't be surprising that it's happening now.
That's the scenario to prepare for, and you should prepare for it even if democrats somehow get control of the government again. Much of the public sector has been privatized and destroyed under democratic administrations.

Oh hey, relevant:
https://youtu.be/IOzwJ17VQrE
I have some critiques. I think the appropriate response is always community organizing first. But the "what if this is the coup" is pretty on point. There would normally be other problems if the government stayed shut down long enough, but Trump may just try to work around it with direct donations from companies.

I'm at an interesting intersection between poor as fuck (or adjacent, mostly anarchist) folks and generally well off (mostly liberal-ish) tech folks, so every once and a while I can help with some info that bridges that gap. Right now is kind of a critical time for that.
For anyone not extremely affected by the SNAP thing, here's a reasonable video:
#USPol

#2025inasongorpoem
America
All of your enemies
Come from within
But you lash out so
It is seen
Like some frightened child
In an angry world
Or the fall of Rome
Your demise comes
From your own hands
- Track 11 on The Offspring's self-titled album, released in 1989 replaced in 2001 with 3:22 of silence.

It's also worth noticing that, when viewed through this lens, a government shutdown with no possibility of resolution is not a mistake. It's the objective. They see everything the government does (outside of violence) as unnecessary.
Their government exists to protect markets by providing capitalists with death squads. Everything else can be disposed of. They don't want to *resolve* the shutdown. The shutdown is what winning looks like for them.

There tends to be this implicit assumption that only the state can provide services to the people. It's endemic to liberals. If authoritarians seize power, the thinking goes, there's nothing we can do.
But we have ample examples of the opposite. Trumpism is a specific type of authoritarianism where the state withdraws to allow corporations to control most things. They get a degree of autonomy and, in exchange, bow to the sovereign.
This is common in South American dictatorships (often those backed and supported by the US). So it can be helpful to look to these as examples of how to deal with that type of regime.
#USPol

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Hex City:
🎵 Black
#HexCity
https://hextransmitter.bandcamp.com/album/black-light-city
https://open.spotify.com/track/7xGeR85jkXoSQthlMgR8FO
Please 🔁 BOOST to share what you like
- your followers don't see if you ⭐ favourite a post

I'm trying to play through the implications of some software I've been thinking about maybe designing.
It's legal to make a digital copy of the media that you own (videos, audio) physical copies of. It's legal to give a physical copy of your media to someone else or loan it out, which transfers your viewing license while they have It. Then it should also be legal to let someone else use a digital copy of your media given that you don't also use it at the same time. So as long as you keep track of your license, you should be able to let exactly one person stream some media you own.
If someone else then "steals" that content and views it without a license then that has to be legally on them, otherwise streaming platforms would be liable whenever someone cracks some DRM.
So then, it should be completely legal to set up a local community media library streaming service where you can share content you own licenses to as long as you track your license count and don't let more people stream at any given time than there are licenses available.
Is there something obvious I'm missing (aside from the MPAA and RIAA don't care about the law and will just sue anyone they can just to make an example)?

All we're asking is for y'all to catch up on some history so you understand what you're coming into. Even #NoKings grew from #50501Movement, which started as a decentralized protest before being taken over by the nonprofit industrial complex. Antifa networks were doxxing fash hard through the first Trump admin, but those networks go all the way back to the 80's... And they inherited an even older tradition. If you really want to get down to it, the whole "no kings" thing in Europe was at the very least heavily influenced by indigenous folks in the so-called Americas. There's a lot of history that's lead to this moment, and it's kind of all relevant to understanding how we got here and how we actually get out.

You ever go to a party at a house you don't know, then someone talks to you and you're like, "oh hey, who are you?" And they're like, "I live here, you're in my house."
That's the way energy liberals bring to antifascism. Like, we're all super glad you're here. Most of us understand why you're late, and we're just glad you finally made it. But like, you're kind of in our house. You didn't invent this shit, but we've been here for a while.
#USPol

You know, I get why people are down on 2025 but karma got Charlie Kirk in the neck this year and the Joyful Reaper also collected Dick Cheney. Trump is on fire, and it's not too late for him to stroke out at the last minute under the pressure of all the Epstein stuff.
I'm just saying, as hellish as everything has been it could still make a saving throw for "meh."

As a reminder of the contempt that the ruling class has for us, "pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" specifically references something that's literally impossible, and "tightening one's belt" comes from a euphemism for starvation.

I think the hardest thing to accept about this current reality is that our rulers are not terrifying Machiavellians who've built this monstrous dystopia, but scared little children who are also captured within the emergent chains of this terrible system.

Reagan's "Welfare Queen" rhetoric was a dog whistle. The whole "southern strategy" was full of dog whistles. Every time Republicans talked about gay marriage as a "states rights" issue, those were dog whistles. Naming a government agency "the Department of Homeland Security" was a dog whistle. Trump's speeches leading up to his first term were full of dog whistles.
Nazis have total control of all branches of government. They've cut off funding to all but the most oppressive elements of the government. There are concentration camps, both in client states (CECOT, among others) and in the US (Alligator Auschwitz, among others). They're actively carrying out ethnic cleansing.
When DHS puts out some Nazi shit, it's not a dog whistle. It's a vuvuzela. They're not trying to signal their intent without any of the "normies" noticing. They actively doing what they wanted to do. It's not a signal because there's nothing to signal. It's a celebration.
#USPol

I've been really anxious about what would happen with the Dutch election tonight. I'm starting to relax and I hope things keep going the same way.
My kid was playing outside of one of the polling places in Amsterdam. Just before we left, I overheard someone say "Fuck Wilders." I'm glad the polling seems to reflect that sentiment.

I keep saying the same thing over and over with my kids: you don't make decisions with your voice, you make them with your body.
"I want to go to the park."
"Ok, put your shoes on."
"I want to go on my play date."
"Put on a jacket and get in the bike."
"I don't want to be late to school."
"I don't control time, if you don't want to be late you have to brush your teeth."
There's a fundamental truth underlying this concept though, one that I hadn't really thought about. On some level, I feel as though, any choice you can't make with your body isn't a real choice. If you're begging someone to do something for you, it's ultimately not something you control.
As I'm compelled, by threat of violence against my family, to pay for war against my comrades and to kill people I don't even know, I think about that. How far is our concept of freedom from the police state we are taught to imagine as the global beacon of liberty. My participation in the violence had always been compulsory.
Perhaps we could do better than just #NoKings.
#USPol

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #NewMusicFix
Hex Girlfriend:
🎵 Get It Together
#HexGirlfriend
#newRelease 🆕 single
https://open.spotify.com/track/2JV91syGSQSQpVoE2qYEaK

Thought Slime posted a video on Liberals and Charlie Kirk (linked in my post). It touched on a few ideas I've been wanting to explore more.
Why is it that, even though we talk "memes" going "viral" we are still talking about "Free Market of Ideas" as though ideas were inanimate objects we could handle and observe objectively? Perhaps that idea is it's own infection.
https://hexmhell.writeas.com/memetic-effluent-and-the-wet-market-of-ideas

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Nacirema people is their insistence that they do not participate in practices of which they clearly do. Equally unusual is the fact that, unlike other sacrificial cultures who raid neighboring tribes for victims, both slaves and victims for human sacrifice are only taken from within the society. In fact, there is a very strong cultural taboo against sacrificing or enslaving those from other tribes.
They are aware of the rituals of human sacrifice in other tribes, but claim such rituals to be inconsistent with their society. Yet their human sacrifice rituals are some of the most elaborate in the world. These rituals are so important that there is a whole part of Nacirema society dedicated specifically to arguing about who should and should not be sacrificed, restraining and feeding the potential victims for the years during which these arguments take place, and ultimately preparing and administering the ritual poison.
This is strangely similar to their approach to slavery. Both human sacrifice and slavery were once a much larger part of Nacirema society. Their human sacrifice rituals now take far longer and happen far less often, but at no point have they ever recognized these ritual sacrifices as such. Meanwhile, the Nacirema do acknowledge that slavery was part of their culture once. During the time when they did recognize their practice of slavery, they did raid other tribes for slaves. Now they follow the same complex ritual for slavery as they do for human sacrifice.
It is strange that, by following this ritual and only choosing victims from within their society, they seem to become incapable of seeing their behavior for what it is.

I'm gonna bump this again since it's relevant to #NoKingsDay
#USpol

What would win the next US election?
#USPol #Shitpost
An anthropomorphic guillotine
Barnaby Jones's last single
3:22 of silence from The Offspring
The WKUK "it's illegal to say" sketch

It's also interesting that we're only tangentially making the connection between shit social media and fascism. What we are not saying is that control of social space *is* a form of governance. Humans have the right to free social spaces, both physical and digital.
When we think about social media as a system of control, as a government, we see that capitalist social media results in incredibly abusive dictatorships. These dictatorships exist solely to exploit their citizens, extracting both labor and attention, for the gain of a few. They manipulate their citizens to keep them locked in. It's not a coincidence that these systems algorithmically promote fascist ideology. They are themselves a type of fascist government that pushes fascism into the physical space.

It's Interesting today that the popularization of @…'s concept of "enshittification" is leading us to really think hard about how various methods of vendor lock-in enable corporations to abuse users. We see how first there's lock-in then quickly abuse follows, and recognize that the only way out of this trap is to build systems where users can leave at will.
But it's interesting that in this time of rising fascism no one is making the connection to fascism, as both increased lock in and enshittification of government. And no one is making the connection between the need to make systems optional to avoid enshittification, and libertarian socialist arguments against the systemic lock-in (and following abuse) of capitalism and the state.

QQ for all the "Restore the #RuleOfLaw" folks out there: When militarized police crushed Occupy for daring to challenge the logic of bailing out the bankers who crashed the economy rather than the people they fleeced, was that "Rule of Law"? When militarized police maimed and brutalized water protectors, was that "Rule of Law"? When oil companies and tech monopolies fund both parties and just happen to get legislation that keeps them in power, is that "Rule of Law"? When your tax dollars go to fund genocide, to pay to drop bombs on children, is that "Rule of Law"? When the NSA was spying on American citizens, was that "Rule of Law"? How about the drone strikes on Americans, was that "Rule of Law"? When cops murder people and then use "qualified immunity" to get away with it, is that "Rule of Law"?
Y'all keep talking about how #NoKings is about "restoring rule of law." It's got a bit of a "Make America Great Again" feel to it: you're invoking a return to a history that never actually existed.

For anyone who'd appreciate a Cowboy Bebop reference, Mad Pierrot embodies the essence the sovereign.

Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)

I just woke up from a dream. For every parent there is a time when, with shame, we have to explain how the world actually works... when they become a little too old to keep saying, "I'll explain it when you're older."
Amsterdam is full of reminders of the occupation, of the Holocaust. It's impossible to pretend there hasn't been a great evil here... One that's not in the past, but still very alive in the present.
At some point things will have to change because fascism can't last forever. It is a thing which necessarily contains its own downfall. We will, at that point, have an opportunity to make the world one that we can be proud to tell our children we created. We can stop short and reestablish the status quo that got us here, or we can build a world that we will no longer have to explain to each new generation in shame.
What would it look like?
(Shout out to the comrade who prompted me to be thinking about this.)
There was also a sign in my dream that said, "we created the bike, therefore we can do anything." This may or may not be related.

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

It should be noted that the Nacirema absolutely do kill those outside of their tribes during highly ritualized combat. In fact, they are known and feared by many surrounding tribes for their war-like nature. But the previously mentioned taboo seems to be against the execution of the ritual for either enslavement or sacrifice of outsiders for sacrifice or enslavement within tribal territory. Similarly, the Nacirema will not seize slaves during their war raids to bring within their territory. However, it does seem that the tribute system which the Nacirema impose on other tribes favors slavery.
The Elihcian people even tell stories of a chief who tried to end a slave-like practice among their people and refused tribute to the Nacirema. The chief of the Nacirema send emissaries to plot the murder of great chief of the Elihcian with the strongest nobles who were the largest slave owners. The war chief of the Elihcian, a friend of the Nacirema chief, then took over the tribe, enslaved many and paid even more tribute to the Nacirema chief. Many tribes to the South of the Nacirema have very similar stories.
Strangely, again, the Nacirema do not see themselves as war-like. Rather, they see themselves as peaceful. When talking about war and war-raids, they will even sometimes use a phase that means "maintaining" or "sustaining peace" to describe them.
Again, it seems to be the use of ritual that allows them to declare slavery and human sacrifice as "justice" and to declare war as "peace."

Every year, as I come up on my birthday, I start to think a lot more about the shooting. The intensity was a bit lower after Trump left office the first time, but October of 2024 was pretty intense.
As I've been processing through all this, I thought about the cards and letters folks sent to me in the hospital. I have a box of them in the US and sometimes I think about asking for them to be sent here. But things have a tenancy to get lost in the mail on the way here.
There's a little bit of a trapped and incomplete feeling, that Trump's chaos makes feel even more intense.
So I decided to write a bit about that box, and the hospital, and death.
CW: body horror, death
#Writing

I remember a video getting recommended to me, after I got shot of course, about what it felt like to get shot. It completely missed the point.
I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote most of this around 4 in the morning.
CW: gun violence, body horror, etc.
https://write.as/hexmhell/echos

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

I also want to be careful about protecting our upstairs neighbors who are renting. I'm especially curious if there's anything we can do to help build solidarity with them.

#DearLazyWeb: Hey #Nederlanders ik heb en expat vrag over mijn #VvE. Our management company is absolute garbage. Our VVE management company recently scheduled repainting, during winter, with the most incompetent company possible, who did a horrible job, some of which didn't need to be done. Our windows had just been repainted since they were painted before we moved in, so 1/3 of the work they did was unnecessary, and now they look much worse than they did before. I could go on, but generally lots and lots of complaints along with absolutely terrible service.
Our upstairs neighbor (also an owner) also hates them and wants to switch, but a rental company owns the top half of the building and seems to be trying to force us in to staying. Basically, this management company is super cheap and the rental company are absolutely trash absentee leaches. (They *may* also have not been paying their part of the VvE fees for a while, but I'm not totally sure I understood everything.)
Unfortunately, I am way out of my depth and can't seem to get much help from google. Can anyone give me some advice about what to read or who to talk to, or are we actually stuck?

#Nederlands taal vrag: Is a "vrachtwagens" only a semi truck? Is there a derogatory term for those awful American trucks, like "wankpanzer"?

Here's your regular reminder:
There is no debate over if cars will or will not be part of the future. They will not. They are a luxury we can no longer afford. The question is only if we will choose to rid our future of cars, or allow cars to rid us of our future.
#FuckCars

I feel as though I should illustrate the difference that this one single constraint can make by two examples.
The rules of Simon Says are maximally authoritarian. You must perform any action ordered, with the only restriction that the authority must say "Simon says" first. Were you forced to stay in this system, it would be the most despotic autocracy possible. But it's not. It's a silly game because you can leave at any time.
Let's flip this and imagine a room. During a specific period of time you will have absolute control over everything in this room. In this room you have total freedom. This is not even the limited freedom, the coordinated freedom, the compromising freedom of civil society. You could, without consequence, perform any action you wish in this room. You could say anything, destroy or steal any object, order any individual to perform any action, kill any person in the room with you and take anything they own. This is the sovereign freedom, the absolute freedom, of dictators and kings. The only restriction is that you are not allowed to leave the room while you have this freedom. In fact, you really only have this level of freedom because the room is actually empty other than for you. I am, of course, talking about a form of torture still common in the US: solitary confinement.

I feel as though I should illustrate the difference that this one single constraint can make by two examples.
The rules of Simon Says are maximally authoritarian. You must perform any action ordered, with the only restriction that the authority must say "Simon says" first. Were you forced to stay in this system, it would be the most despotic autocracy possible. But it's not. It's a silly game because you can leave at any time.
Let's flip this and imagine a room. During a specific period of time you will have absolute control over everything in this room. In this room you have total freedom. This is not even the limited freedom, the coordinated freedom, the compromising freedom of civil society. You could, without consequence, perform any action you wish in this room. You could say anything, destroy or steal any object, order any individual to perform any action, kill any person in the room with you and take anything they own. This is the sovereign freedom, the absolute freedom, of dictators and kings. The only restriction is that you are not allowed to leave the room while you have this freedom. In fact, you really only have this level of freedom because the room is actually empty other than for you. I am, of course, talking about a form of torture still common in the US: solitary confinement.

Also my #infosec friends could learn a thing or two here from disaster prep if this isn't already a familiar idea.
Do you have a MISL for a large scale cvss 9 0-Day that's being exploited in the wild? Have you run a table top? You fucking should. Especially since we've all been through that shit several times now. You should absolutely have a clear plan of what's gonna happen, and your whole team should be able to respond.

Some answers from @… in a quote thread.
https://indieweb.social/@willowbl00/115696205185905943
For anyone else also looking, another useful key phrase is "Master Scenario Events List" or MESL. This is for operations based games. For small group disaster prep, official MESL could be useful (if you can get them) to give you an idea of where you could (or may need to) fill gaps.

Hey everyone! It's free boosts for pictures of burning cop cars and ACAB memes day! Happy Luciafeest!
#ACABday

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

We all know Trumpism is an illusion, a facade, a game. His cult is breaking down as they continue to be confronted with the ever widening divergence between their perceived reality and his claims. I feel as though Dawn of Everything provides a useful lens through which to both understand this and to dismantle the ritual violence this cult is carrying out. Perhaps we can even extend this to ourselves to disentangle ourselves from the cultish elements of capitalist modernity.
Authoritarianism itself is ultimately a complex illusion, thus this analysis, the recognition and dismantling of illusion, should inform all elements of those who wish to express anti-authoritarian resistance.
#USPol #50501 #NoKingsDay #Portland

#DearLazyWeb: As part of #DisasterPreparedness organizing in the past, our group did a table top exercise to identify gaps in our response capabilities. We were fortunate enough to have someone who worked in public health make one and GM it for us.
I found some from FEMA with some quick searching. Assuming a group of 5-10 people organizing for themselves (and maybe folks in their neighborhoods), are there any exercises/table top simulations like these that other folks would recommend?
#DisasterPrep #Disaster #CommunityOrganizing