currentaffairs.org

I saw this article by Nathan J. Robinson on Current Affairs and wanted to share. I do agree with the idea that the twitter format discourages deep conversation and debate. Lemmy is in general much better in this regard, but even still it is affected by the wider internet culture of our time, and a proper debate culture takes effort.

But I’ve come to wonder whether the only thing worse than arguing on the internet is not arguing on the internet. Something happened over time, and I think it coincided with the rise of Donald Trump and the emergence of Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok as the social media platforms of choice. A lot of people just stopped bothering to defend their ideas against people who disagree with them. The arguments dried up.

Any fractional owner, whether they own 50 percent or 0.05 percent, has the legal right to file for partition. Under the legal principle of “tenancy in common,” every owner has a non-subdividable right to the entire property. If one person wants out, the law historically favors “alienability” (the ability to sell) over “preservation.” Courts traditionally felt it was unfair to force someone to stay in a business relationship they no longer wanted.

If you have not listened to Phil Ochs, you need to. His message is as strong today as it was 60 years ago. Find some before the corporations erase it like they are trying to do with David Rovics and others.

It’s true that Nigeria has experienced unprecedented levels of violence in recent years. There are various militant groups operating in Nigeria calling themselves bandits, jihadis (including the notorious Boko Haram), Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), and other names, all seeking to exploit the current instability in the country for their own goals. These groups have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people and displaced millions, severely affecting large swaths of Nigeria. Many farmers are being killed, churches and mosques are being burned down, and villages are completely disappearing.

It’s true that Nigeria has experienced unprecedented levels of violence in recent years. There are various militant groups operating in Nigeria calling themselves bandits, jihadis (including the notorious Boko Haram), Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), and other names, all seeking to exploit the current instability in the country for their own goals. These groups have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people and displaced millions, severely affecting large swaths of Nigeria. Many farmers are being killed, churches and mosques are being burned down, and villages are completely disappearing.

The leaps being made here are genuinely astounding. Hanson is actually arguing that using insider information to make yourself richer is somehow akin to being a whistleblower. In fact, it’s really a form of public service, he suggests, because if you make a large and suspicious enough bet—one that no one else would reasonably make—you are effectively alerting the public that something big is about to happen.

Socialists start from the view that all people are equal, regard national and individualistic chauvinism as contrary to our deep moral obligations, stress how we have more in common as finite, vulnerable human beings than what separates us, and want to use reason and science to build a better society for all. Fascists believe that people are fundamentally unequal from birth and become more so over time, insist that “higher” nations and races have special rights to preserve and strengthen themselves even at the expense of the weak, regard this as a reflection of the inner greatness that distinguishes them from lower forms of life, and reject humanism and rationalism in favor of a struggle for supremacy and domination. Their worldview thus licenses enormous violence against socialists and other “low” enemies.

used to think that the hype surrounding artificial intelligence was just that—hype. I was skeptical when ChatGPT made its debut. The media frenzy, the breathless proclamations of a new era—it all felt familiar. I assumed it would blow over like every tech fad before it. I was wrong. But not in the way you might think.

Saudi Arabia has been ranked one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, and is frequently placed among the “worst of the worst” in Freedom House’s survey of political and civil rights. Amnesty International says that despite a massive global “image laundering” campaign, “the human rights situation in the Kingdom has deteriorated exponentially.” It has no national elections, and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) uses imprisonment, torture, and execution to quash even mild dissent against the government. People can be sentenced to death over their tweets, and women who protest being kept as chattel by men can be thrown into prison and tortured. The resulting climate of fear can result in absurdities—the Financial Times recently reported that Saudi engineers and designers have been too afraid to tell MBS that his ludicrous plan for a utopian city is literally physically impossible.

One of the most powerful people in Congress is a 92-year old Iowan who’s obsessed with Dairy Queen, his vacuum cleaner, and ruining the lives of his constituents. So why haven’t the Democrats beaten him yet?

Even among self-described “ecosocialists,” the lives of animals are often treated as an afterthought. We can, and must, do better.

Now, Mayor Lurie has gone a step further by formally convening an A-list of billionaire CEOs to advise him on policy. The roster of “Partnership for San Francisco” includes Sam Altman of OpenAI, Ruth Porat of Google and Alphabet, Brian Chesky of AirBnB, and even Y Combinator’s Garry Tan (yes, the “die slow motherfuckers” Garry Tan). Public policy is looking astoundingly private.

At a time when Democrats across the country are being begged by their constituents to stand for something, the local Democratic party and City Hall leaders are proudly championing their “moderate” bona fides, standing for nothing. They offer concerts and vibe shifts in place of principles, and elevate civility and cheerfulness over results. At every opportunity, this new political formation ignores the housing and economic needs of working people and those in poverty. In some ways, it feels like the dystopian fantasies of the Network State movement are being grafted onto our living, beloved city: limitless police spending, elimination of social programs, privatization of public services, and repression of any dissenting views.

Ken Klippenstein is an independent investigative journalist and proprietor of Klip News. He’s published scoops on Luigi Mangione, leaks from the Trump administration, and lots of other important information you won’t find at the big news networks. He joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss how mainstream media has been captured by government sources, why national security reporting is uniquely broken, and his recent reporting on Trump’s new presidential directive, NSPM-7, a sweeping order that directs federal agencies to treat political dissent as a form of domestic terrorism.

The assembly line, the foundation of modern capitalism, came from perfecting methods to slice up animals while—and this is the important part—preventing them from resisting. And once capitalists figured out how to turn animals into component parts (just a leg, just a throat, just a head), they realized they could do the same thing to human workers (just a hand, just an arm, just a cutting motion). Ideas of how to prevent human resistance came from first figuring out how to prevent animal resistance.

In Argentina, President Javier Milei has screwed the economy up so badly he needs a $20 billion bailout. That’s because his “free market” economics don’t actually work.

The bare minimum expected of a leader of the American left, and a democratic socialist, should be a willingness to say “I endorse the conclusion of mainstream human rights organizations.” Why wouldn’t Sanders be willing to do that? He says that it doesn’t really matter “what you call it,” because it’s horrific. But clearly it does matter to Sanders, because he is making a choice not to use the same language as the human rights organizations. Why is he making that choice? He has not explained.

Podcast bros are interviewing presidents and power players without doing basic research beforehand. The result is a propagandistic catastrophe.

They rejected kings and were sincerely concerned about the possibility of a dictatorship. But we need to move past founder-worship and focus on justice.

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Building “alternative” energy infrastructure isn’t enough. To avert climate disaster, fossil fuels need to be restricted, and energy consumption overall needs to fall.

Building “alternative” energy infrastructure isn’t enough. To avert climate disaster, fossil fuels need to be restricted, and energy consumption overall needs to fall.

When we feel politically helpless, we turn to 'subversive' entertainment. But winning within the realm of pop culture is a poor substitute for political power.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/20217731

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/30432639

This was published a couple of weeks ago, but not yet posted in this community.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)