Tootfinder

Making this a subtoot so I don't come across as smug or condescending...
My decision to stop using github when they started providing services to ICE back in ~2016 felt awkward at times but has been feeling really good in hindsight right now.
I see a bunch of people now saying "why boycott X company over some "minor" transgression or political capitulation (or over a "neutral" stance on LLM code). The answer is: it shows what their values are, which predicts their future behavior, especially under the tilted playing field of capitalism. I'm by no means perfect at this and I don't think shouting at people to boycott is a good idea for several reasons. People should boycott what they want to, for their own reasons. But I am posting this to try to help others be aware of the upsides of taking action when confronted with "subtle" evidence of corporate unvalues.

"Largely unreported is the extent to which the NHS is bled white by a private sector enjoying the benefits of state sector staff education and training, charging NHS trusts £80bn in PFI payments for buildings that cost £13bn to construct, and reaping at least £10bn a year in “excess profits” from supplying drugs costing the NHS £23bn (five times their cost of production)."
What place does Britain occupy in the general crisis of capitalism? | Morning Star

The implications are interesting enough when we apply this to systems like capitalism or national governments, but there are other very interesting implications when applied to systems like race or gender.
Like, as a cis man the only way I can be free to express and explore my own masculinity is if the masculinity I participate in is one which allows anyone the freedom to leave. Then I have an obligation to recognize the validity of nom-masculine trans identity as a necessary component of my own. If I fail to do this, then I trap myself in masculinity and allow the system to control me rather than me to be a free participant in the system.
But if it's OK to escape but not enter, that's it's own restriction that constrains the freedom to leave. It creates a barrier that keeps people in by the fear that they cannot return. So in order for me to be free in my cis masculine identity, I must accept non-masculine trans identities as they are and accept detransitioning as also valid.
But I also need to accept trans-masc identities because restricting entry to my masculinity means non-consensually constraining other identities. If every group imposes an exclusion against others coming in, that, by default, makes it impossible to leave every other group. This is just a description of how national borders work to trap people within systems, even if a nation itself allows people to "freely" leave.
So then, a free masculinity is one which recognizes all configurations of trans identities as valid and welcomes, if not celebrates, people who transition as affirmations of the freedom of their own identity (even for those who never feel a reason to exercise that same freedom).
The most irritating type of white person may look at this and say, "oh, so then why can't I be <not white>?" Except that the critique of transratial identities has never been "that's not allowed" and has always been "this person didn't do the work." If that person did the work, they would understand that the question doesn't make sense based on how race is constructed. That person might understand that race, especially whiteness, is more fluid than they at first understood. They might realize that whiteness is often chosen at the exclusion of other racialized identities. They would, perhaps, realize that to actually align with any racialized identity, they would first have to understand the boot of whiteness on their neck, have to recognize the need to destroy this oppressive identity for their own future liberation. The best, perhaps only, way to do this would be to use the privilege afforded by that identity to destroy it, and in doing so would either destroy their own privilege or destroy the system of privilege. The must either become themselves completely ratialized or destroy the system of race itself such being "transracial" wouldn't really make sense anymore.
But that most annoying of white person would, of course, not do any such work. Nevertheless, one hopes that they may recognize the paradox that they are trapped by their white identity, forced forever by it to do the work of maintaining it. And such is true for all privileged identities, where privilege is only maintained through restrictions where these restrictions ultimately become walls that imprison both the privileged and the marginalized in a mutually reinforcing hell that can only be escaped by destroying the system of privilege itself.

A power outage in San Francisco on Saturday,
which left 124,000 of 414,000 customers in the dark.
🔥also caused a widespread Waymo meltdown,
with apparently all active Waymo robotaxis in the affected parts of the city stuck in robotic comas
-- blocking intersections and choking traffic on some streets.

Blackout in San Francisco Litters Streets with Traffic-Blocking, Deactivated Waymos
Robot chaos in the tech capital of the U.S.

The working class is the fundamental force that produces the material conditions necessary for the reproduction of society, and through our collective labor we not only create food, shelter, healthcare, education, transportation, and communication networks, but we also sustain and reproduce the conditions that allow every aspect of social life to continue functioning, so that even those who do not work, whether they are managers, bureaucrats, or capitalists, depend entirely on our labor for …

I’m getting enough of these to think it must be the new Nigerian prince scam. Am I right? Anyone know how it works?

The Parenti text challenges students, perhaps for the first time,
to critically assess the dominant pluralist paradigm;
that it invites students to consider the ubiquity of politics in their lives;
that they confront the struggle and inevitable conflict between democracy and capitalism, which is usually ignored.
—Christopher A. Leu, 
California State University, Northridge

Book: Democracy for the Few — The Michael Parenti Political Archive

#FunFact about Whitehorse - Germans love the town. Germans are the 2nd largest group of tourists, after the U.S., to visit the Yukon capital. There are German speaking tours and excursions and, during peak travel periods, direct tour flights from Frankfurt to Whitehorse.
#Tourism #Whitehorse
https://www.rubyrange.com/yukons-charisma-the-german-connection/

Marx's Theory of Value at the Frontiers Classical Political Economics, Imperialism and Ecological Breakdown
By Güney Işıkara, Patrick Mokre
I'd be interested in reading this, but £116 for 200 pages?
The piss is being taken, along with the money.
Marx's Theory of Value at the Frontiers: Classical Political Economics

Marx's Theory of Value at the Frontiers: Classical Political Economics, Imperialism and Ecological Breakdown
Why do humans produce the things they do, in the way they do it?  As this book shows, the classical political economics approach to value and prices has fundamental implications for analyzing the historical trajectory of capitalism. It demonstrates that the classical political economists’ approach to value and prices, which finds its most advanced formulation in Marx, sheds light on the source of profits, exploitation, whether equivalents are exchanged in trade, dynamics of asymmetric and