@hex@kolektiva.social2026-05-19 07:09:57
Logistics in the technical sense (part of supply chain management) is a subset of logistics in the vernacular sense ("the handling of the details of an operation"). You can explore this second and more general sense, and thereby build an understanding of the first and more technical sense, by iteratively asking the question, "how does one make that happen" and follow questions from there.
A big part of organizing is figuring out the (vernacular) logistics (and helping others figure it out). You want to organize a seed swap? Ok. How does one make that happen? Well, you need seeds, people, a place, and perhaps a time. How does one make that happen? You can forage seeds or you can buy seeds for a garden and swap extras. How do you get people to come? Well, figure out where you want people to come from and choose an accessible place. What's the easiest thing to do? Get people from your neighborhood. How does one make that happen? Well, maybe put up flyers. How does one make that happen? Well, print them on your printer if you have one, or at a library, then go post them up. Etc.
Keep asking questions until you either find a roadblock that you can't find a way around, or you find things you can do yourself (one of those things you can do yourself is asking friends to help).
If you practice the exercise of thinking about how things happen, you can start to find things that you can do yourself. You can start to understand what exists now, and you can imagine what's possible. By thinking about logistics, you can figure out how to replace things when they collapse or are dismantled. You can also identify things that can't easily be replaced, and try to figure out alternatives.
This practice is good for figuring out how to build, but it can also be a valuable practice for figuring out how to resist. Concentration camps and ethnic cleansing also require logistics. Mass displacement means moving people. How does one do that? People are generally going to be moved in planes or buses. How does one do that? Well, people get loaded on to planes or buses in specific places. Planes and buses need fuel. Planes are fueled at their airports, which may well be the same places where people are loaded on to them. There is a fuel depo and a fuel truck that makes flying people out of a specific place possible. How does the fuel get to that fuel depo? Well, that fuel is probably also delivered by truck. Someone drives those trucks. Someone fuels those planes. Someone clears the planes for takeoff. Someone fuels those busses. Someone drives those busses. And so on.
Logistics networks can be highly complex. The more complex the operation, the more possible points of failure and more possible points where pressure can be applied, where operations can be disrupted. Ethnic cleansing is a complicated operation. The logistics of disrupting complicated things tend to be much less complicated than the logistics of the complicated things themselves.
The Right has exploited this fact for a long time. Centralized social services are logistically complex. Public infrastructure is logistically complex. By destroying these things, they can loot public resources by privatizing the infrastructure and functionality.
But the things that support the Right are even more logistically complex. Oil, cars, AI data centers, internal paramilitary, these are extremely complicated and fragile. There are numerous pressure points, all of which can respond to numerous strategies.
If we want to win, we should reduce the influence of politics over the things we care about. We should focus on building distributed mutual aid networks that don't rely on state funding and aren't subject to the whims of politicians. This is also known as "dual power." That is, creating counter-institutions outside of the dominant political system. The Right already does this in the form of churches and corporations.
As we reduce our complexity, we can then press our complexity advantage against the things for which the Right *needs* the state: the apparatus of violence needed to maintain capital and enforce the dominant order.
@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-17 19:10:57
When asked by Doocy, Trump answers with candor, admitting that the MOU with Iran is nothing,
that he doesn't want to put his signature on it,
and that all of this is a trumped up attempt to move on from war with Iran . . .
for which he will throw someone else, Vance, under the bus.
(JD, he's not kidding.
Ask Mike Pence.)
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-07-18 14:11:04
I keep seeing the "cars replaced horses" thing related to "AI."
People keep comparing "AI" to cars (positively) without thinking about the fact that cars were forced on people (AAA bought up and destroyed tram lines, there were massive protests, etc), and are the primary driver of climate change that is currently on track to make complex human society impossible. Meanwhile, cities that weren't destroyed for cars, or that have reversed most of the damage, are some of the most desirable places to live.
Maybe we could take the car analogy as a warning. Maybe it could be a reminder to think about how forcing technology on people against their will can reshape society in a profoundly negative way.
The answer for cities has been to right-size transit. Eliminate cars wherever possible, maintain emergency vehicles and mobility aids, and find more efficient alternatives (bikes, trams, metros, and trains) where possible. I feel as though we can extrapolate from the metaphor.
We do not have to repeat the mistake of reshaping society around a single, oversimplified, solution in order to benefit a tiny minority. Perhaps we can actually choose the right technologies based on use cases, rather than hype or dogma.
Cars didn't replace horses. Cars replaced walkable cities, tram lines and mass transit, and children playing in the streets.
"Cars replaced horses" to the benefit of a small group of elite men, at tremendous cost to literally everyone else. When people say, "AI is the new 'cars replacing horses'" they are saying something very specific about their privilege and intentions.
@rasterweb@mastodon.social2026-07-15 03:02:03
I wrote a blog post about a movie prop I made for someone... (And I'm actually kind of proud of the battery compartment and power switch.)
https://rasterweb.net/raster/2026/07/08/light-up-film-prop-buttons/
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-07-12 16:28:07
Since it was relevant to a discussion I just had on here and is something most people probably haven't thought about much (unless you've taken one of a handful of philosophy classes), I thought I'd try to lay out a key piece of Descartes' Meditations (#philosophy
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-06-06 13:53:55
I had an interesting chat with a friend who mentioned a book called "The Living Company." Apparently Shell was one of the few companies that saw the 1970's oil crisis coming and was able to adapt. They did it by talking to a bunch of people randomly about the future, identifying patterns, and coming up with possible future scenarios. They then formed clear plans for these future scenarios, where those plans would cover as many related scenarios as possible.
This was actually really familiar to me, though I hadn't read the book, because that's very close to what the Seattle GDC disaster prep committee did. We identified possible disaster scenarios, then identified preparedness steps that served multiple purposes. We got boxes of n95 masks in 2018 and 2019 for wildfire smoke and did a bit of work building box-fan air purifiers. Over the years we handed out these masks to houseless folks who were most exposed to the smoke. When the pandemic hit, we were able to take some of those boxes to first responders just as manufacturing in China dropped because of their lockdowns and as others started PPE hoarding. We focused on N95 because that was one of the overlap points between the unexpected but catastrophic "flu pandemic" that we knew was possible, and the regular "wildfire smoke" problem we were just getting used to.
The book sounds like it's at least partially influenced by cybernetics. There's this Dutch cybernetics connection that I haven't quite figured out. Anyway, this guy talked about how a company needs to be sustainable and all that. My dude, you worked for an oil company. That is categorically not sustainable. All this aside, I think there are a lot of things we can and should take from capitalists (or take back, in some cases). This practice is one of them.
So maybe get together with friends and talk about what you think might happen. We live in a world of crisis, so I'll always recommend disaster preparedness. But there's more than that.
What do you think will happen in the next 5 years?
Assuming that happens, what actions would you take to push that towards the most positive outcome?
I'm listening to Revolutions and reminded of how much effort monarchies put in to preventing revolutions. Corporations can be even more advanced in their planning and preemption. What would it look like if we planned like that?
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-05-24 15:42:26
Just finished "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" by Becky Chambers. Overall it's good but I also have some Thoughts.
First, it was very pleasant to finally read some non-trite utopian solarpunk after having read stuff like Octavia Butler recently. Both hope and despair can be poisonous on their own IMO, so getting some balance in is nice. It's definitely a very valuable thing to be able to lay out an actually desirable and in many ways imaginable future given our grim present. Chambers is no LeGuin though. I'll probably be reading more of her work and maybe she fleshes out these ideas elsewhere, but at least in this book there is no focus on either how the transition to a better society could happen nor on how the better society holds up in the face of adverse events and inclinations. Compare LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" or N. K. Jemisin's short story "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" and it feels like there's something important missing from Chambers' portrait of a future society. Of course, maybe the point is to make a cozy book, in which case fine, there's certainly a place for such things, and I can look for deeper inspiration elsewhere.
The second big thought I had was that Chambers' worldview seems not well-informed by certain indigenous perspectives, and this creates some contradictions. For example, (minor spoilers) when Dex enters the wilderness there's a whole bit about understanding humankind's place in nature and how human settlements are what we're used to but they're only a brief interruption of the vast untouched wilderness. Along the same lines, much of the world is intentionally left untouched by humans as a way to keep it pristine and natural. Later however, a character makes the point that humans *are* animals. The indigenous perspective that I appreciate would agree with that, and would further question the value in distinguishing between human influence on ecosystems and influences that others have. More sharply, one might observe that there's a bigger difference between how different kinds of humans relate to and influence their environments than between how less-disruptive humans and various animals do the same: the strip-mine-operator vs. migrant tribesperson impact difference is probably much greater than the migrant tribesperson vs. beaver gap, for example. Rather than talking about limiting human disruption, then, as if all human-environment interactions are disruptive and must be minimized, we could/should be talking about how to create human societies that have beneficial relationships with their environments and acknowledging that we actually have many positive examples of that, both historical and contemporary. Chambers' utopia is a "humans dominate nature but restrain themselves so that their disruptions are minimal and thus nature can thrive" vision, but what I'd even more like to see would be a "humans study old ways and make new ones so that they can interact positively with ecosystems again" vision, including some of "here are the places that sometimes breaks down but also the patterns and institutions that ensure repair of those breakdowns and thus long-term sustainability."
Final big thought: Chambers' utopia is too homogenous for my tastes. Of course it's hard enough and valuable work dreaming up and sharing any utopia and Chambers' transcends triteness in a number of ways, so this criticism is a bit rude. But the single shared religion, lack of mention of conflicts around shared decisions, especially historical society-defining ones, and nagging questions like "what about the people indigenous to the now-uninhabited lands?" and "what about the indigenous peoples who weren't part of the factory-building societies?" leave me wishing for more nuance in this direction.
All in all: a good book, and I'm criticizing out of a place of appreciation, not scorn. I've got there sequel out from the library as well and will probably detour to a few other books but get to it pretty soon.
Sadly I don't remember who, but I got this one because of a recommendation on here, so thanks if you're someone who recommended it!
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon
@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-01 15:15:08
A new front has opened up in the battle for dominance in AI chips, as Nvidia said its latest development could replace the mouse and keyboard in how people use computers.
The $5tn (£3.7tn) US semiconductor company has launched a “superchip” that puts AI capabilities into laptops and desktop computers, a move that will pit it against Intel, Apple, Qualcomm and AMD.
The RTX Spark chip will be launched this year, and will be used by computer makers including Dell, Lenovo, Asus and H…
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-06-06 11:56:43
I gave the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness crew the significant challenge of trying to make me sound coherent in this interview with Inmn Neruin. I was managing some pretty significant sleep deprivation and a mild cold, but I think it turned out pretty good (despite my best efforts).
But I did talk a lot about my trauma related to some of my experience living in #rural areas, and in doing that I was definitely not as careful as I could have been to talk about that as a trauma experience rather than as reality. Some people get trapped in rural areas, but other folks live there because they find beautiful things.
Not only is #RuralOrganizing critical (Trumpism grew out of areas neglected by "the left"), but rural living can be beautiful and rewarding. I briefly mentioned growing up throwing knives. A friend of mine lived way out in the woods, and there's something special about having a playground that spans several square miles. Intertwined with the old settler colonialism, antisemitism, *phobias, and isolation, that is at the heart of a lot of my personal rural misery, there's also a joyous and feral thing that taught me a lot and, I think, helped me organize more fearlessly. That thing is both individualist and collectivist, in different ways, and I don't think it's well understood without experiencing it. There's far more nuance than I was able to offer (and I definitely could have been more careful not to play into anti-rural stereotypes).
I think I said, "no one wants to live there." People do. You do. So let me try to fix that by giving you a chance to talk about that. I also talked about how slow things move, how nothing changes, but there are also sometimes opportunities to change things in huge ways specifically because structures don't exist to stop those changes. So while I'm bumping this zine and interview, also I want to use this as an opportunity to welcome my rural comrades to help fill in the gaps:
What draws you to where you are?
Do you choose to live in a rural area vs urban, and why?
Is there any other thing I've said that you would like to correct?
What other things should folks know?
https://www.tangledwilderness.org/features/near-death
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-05-29 22:15:58
I tried to write something up to talk about an idea, but it didn't quite work. I have a lot more I need to put into it. But I want to get an idea out, and, after talking with a person who pointed out some of the flaws in what I wrote, I think I can maybe write down the kernel of the idea here.
An acquaintance of mine did a deep dive on Operational Art and wrote his thesis (which prompted an earlier set of posts and an article I wrote for my professional-ish blog) on the intersection of the OODA loop and critical philosophy. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Kilcullen's Three Pillars model (after watching Andrewism's wonderful video) and Beer's VSM. The TL;DR of it is that there's a much better insurgency model. Of course, the insurgency model also works for a bunch of other things, because cybernetics lets you do all kinds of cool abstraction like that.
So as I was reading the essay of a comrade the other day, that model popped back into my head and I'm going to try to share what I can of it.
When colonizers came to the Salish region, they saw what they believed to be an untouched wilderness. They failed to see the ways in which Salish people tended the land. Indigenous fire practices were common on the northwest coast, and the suppression of those practices remains a problem. There is an interrelationship between an environment and the systems within it. Systems, like people, animals, and cultures, adapt to the environment. In doing so, those systems will also change the environment.
Social technology was invisible, so colonizers defaulted to either some kind of Rousseauvian or Malthusian model of these people. They were not, for the colonizers, people who had developed advanced social technologies to live in harmony with their world. They were, rather, people in "a state of nature."
The European influenced left continues to draw this Rousseauvian model, which continues through a lot of Anarchist revolutionary thought. European anarchists were heavily influenced by observations and theories around the behavior of indigenous people. The remnants of this thought still exist in the idea that the system must only be destroyed for us to be free.
This is the same obliviousness to social technology, that social technology actually exists, often informs both early colonizers and modern radicals.
It is through this obliviousness that we fail to recognize how capitalism is a social technology that is managed into existence and maintained, and how changes in the environment can threaten institutions that have become over-adapted to a specific version of that environment.
We can extend Kilcullen's metaphor of a "conflict ecosystem" through cybernetics into a much more rich model, populated by viable systems. The ecosystem itself has a fitness function, which drives adaptation within the environment. But all actors in the environment also affect it. Some try to manage the environment. Revolutions are often over who manages a social ecosystem, over who controls the social technology and what it does.
Once we see this dynamic at play, calls of "riot" and "revolution" make a whole lot less sense. Rather, the question becomes, "how do we change the ecosystem in such a way that it cannot be 'managed' at all?"
Graeber/Wengrow talked about Turtle Island indigenous social technologies in Dawn of Everything, such as the system of moieties and clans described in the book. So I have a good reading list as I think through this model, but I hope the "ecosystem" model is helpful (if not completely fleshed out).
I'd be interested in any critiques or thoughts to help develop this idea more.