@crell@phpc.socialThis is a tricky balance. Some level of skepticism and counter-culture is good and healthy, both for people and society. But when it goes too far, it always seems to end up in the same place.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2
@cjust@infosec.exchangeI think that it's important to remember that in these days of . . . gestures vaguely at . . . everything . . . that there is historical precedent for having some hope that things will get better.
On November 9, 1989:
The fall of the Berlin Wall was a pivotal moment in history that symbolized the end of Cold War-era division and repression in Europe; it led directly to the reunification of Germany and inspired a wave of democratic movements across E…
@hex@kolektiva.socialAfter #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
@gscherer2@social.linux.pizzaCloudy sunset over Moonstone Beach. Moonstone Beach, Cambria, California, USA. October, 2025. #moonstonebeads #cambria #sunset
@raiders@darktundra.xyzVersus: All eyes on a likely matchup between Brock Bowers and the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year https://www.raiders.com/news/versus-all-eyes-on-a-likely-matchup-between-brock-bowers-and-the-reigning…
@shriramk@mastodon.socialThis is the end-point of extractive AI. First get people to upload everything, then suck everything out of it, then get AI to generate all the answers. I wonder how this cycle continues. (If it means Chegg can't continue the cycle…paint me so sad.)
@saraislet@infosec.exchangeI'm anticipating a lot of grief in 2026 after a hard end to 2025, so I'm not looking forward to the many January conversations about everything to look forward to in 2026
You can't skip processing grief and jump straight into hope. The grief will consume you and turn into despair, or you'll internalize and repress the trauma and metabolize it into despair via a different path.
Or, I don't know, maybe some people can grieve and hope at the same time, but I know…
@cdarwin@c.imTop Republicans are portraying Donald Trump as a
“big-hearted president”
who is desperate to reopen the US government,
even as he delays food assistance funding for millions of low-income Americans
but steams ahead with construction of his $300m gilded White House ballroom
htt…
@raiders@darktundra.xyzVersus: All eyes on a likely matchup between Brock Bowers and the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year https://www.raiders.com/news/versus-all-eyes-on-a-likely-matchup-between-brock-bowers-and-the-reigning…
@hex@kolektiva.socialThere's a word at the beginning and end of Dawn of Everything that feels self-referential right now: Kairos.
> We began this book with a quote which refers to the Greek notion of kairos as one of those occasional moments in a society’s history when its frames of reference undergo a shift – a metamorphosis of the fundamental principles and symbols, when the lines between myth and history, science and magic become blurred – and, therefore, real change is possible. Philosophers sometimes like to speak of ‘the Event’ – a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic masterpiece – that is, a breakthrough which reveals aspects of reality that had previously been unimaginable but, once seen, can never be unseen. If so, kairos is the kind of time in which Events are prone to happen.
> Societies around the world appear to be cascading towards such a point. This is particularly true of those which, since the First World War, have been in the habit of calling themselves ‘Western’. On the one hand, fundamental breakthroughs in the physical sciences, or even artistic expression, no longer seem to occur with anything like the regularity people came to expect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet at the same time, our scientific means of understanding the past, not just our species’ past but that of our planet, has been advancing with dizzying speed. Scientists in 2020 are not (as readers of mid-twentieth-century science fiction might have hoped) encountering alien civilizations in distant star systems; but they are encountering radically different forms of society under their own feet, some forgotten and newly rediscovered, others more familiar, but now understood in entirely new ways.
Reading this as I write something very inspired by this work feels especially serendipitous, especially at this time. When they wrote the book, I think that kairos felt more serendipitous itself. But as the frequency of opportunity increases, the veil between realities feels more malleable... that perhaps we can poke a finger through and open a portal to a completely different future than the one we've felt locked into for such a long time.
https://anarchoccultism.org/building-zion/the-coordinated-swarm-lyhr
@aral@mastodon.ar.alFolks creating free and open software for the common good: here’s a checklist of everything else you should be doing so corporations can make the best use of your free labour.
I mean, sure, some good security tips here and worth reading anyway but do fuck off with holding free software developers to account for supply chain attacks. It’s your fucking supply chain, not ours, you fucking corporation.
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished “The Last Murder at the End of the World” by Stuart Turton.
Their island is a sanctuary against an apocalyptic fog which has enveloped the world. The villagers and the elders have lived in relative peace for decades until a murder flings everything into chaos. Solving it may be the only chance for survival.
4/5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
h…
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioI’ve seen students panic and ••delete their entire local clone•• of a project (discarding all of their unpushed work!!) because they were so sure they’re ruined everything when they encountered a tiny merge conflict.
Of course I try to counter this — warning them up front about what a merge conflict looks like, helping them overcome their fear of asking for help, doing hands-on exercises with intentionally creating merge conflicts — but the fact “OMG DELETE EVERYTHING” could •ever• be a newcomer’s response to a minor merge conflict is a blaring klaxon of design failure.
/end
@hex@kolektiva.socialOne of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzLocation is everything, except when it’s the Cowboys DC Matt Eberflus https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/12/21/location-dallas-cowboys-dc-matt-eberflus/87874865007/
@outer@mas.toNOTHING is forever...
Here are tips for how to stop the latest MacOS upgrade now, and if you want, until the end of support comes years later.
Apple is good at supporting old stuff, but they're bound to get worse at it. Everything's changing faster and faster, and nefarious bad guys make security harder and harder.
#Security
@scottmiller42@mstdn.socialI don't think I've publicly commented on #SaudiArabia before, so I will now.
Saudi Arabis is a country that the USA should seriously reconsider as an ally. Quite frankly I believe the only reason they are an ally at all is because SA controls a massive flow of oil to western nations. Yet another reason to do everything we can to end our dependence on foreign oil, aka end our depen…
@cdarwin@c.imA spooky convergence is happening in media.
Everything that is not already television is turning into television.
Whether the starting point is a student directory (Facebook),
radio (podcasts), or
an AI image generator, (Sora)
the end point seems to be the same:
a river of short-form video.
https:/…
@aral@mastodon.ar.al“It rained heavily last night.
Our clothes, blankets, mattresses, everything got soaked.
We were freezing… truly freezing.
Living in a tent has become unbearable… feels like a disaster every day.
We try to protect ourselves from the rain, but we still end up sitting in water inside the tent.
We are a family of seven and the tent can’t hold us but we keep trying.
We keep holding on.
Please, we need your help to move somewhere safer.”
–
@mxp@mastodon.acm.orgThere was this paper I wanted to write, but things weren’t looking good: I was on sick leave, then the semester started, I was considering retracting it.
Luckily, the editors extended the deadline until the end of October. I was grateful, because this seemed doable, and I did everything I could to meet the deadline, pulled all nighters, and I managed to submit a reviewable paper before the deadline.
⇢
