● 07.28.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 28/07/2023: ‘Capacitor, Ditching Twitter and Facebook

Posted in News Roundup at 3:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• At the start of the pandemic, we weren’t worried about toilet paper, having probably 200 rolls in giant packages in our linen closet. Maybe more. My father-in-law spends his retirement keeping an eye out for deals, calling us when things fall into the “buy” range. This of course was useful; while coworkers complained about running low, or their kids burning through rolls, I knew I didn’t have to buy any more for years.

• My student poverty years, decades past now, instilled a fear of running out. The pandemic added a new layer to this: supply chain issues. And as the world catches fire, as food supplies in Ukraine are destroyed by Russia in missile strikes…well, you get where I’m going. My paranoia, never particularly low to begin with, is ratcheted up. I’m wondering if I should buy an extra sack of rice. Set up additional shelves in my basement, buy cans good enough for years, let myself drift somewhere between cautious and prepper.

• Friday night, dinner had, there’s not much on TV. Flipping the channels I see horse racing, swimming, and famous people eating.

• It’s been sizzling hot all week, but it’s nice and cool outside now. Nice and windy and cool. I may hangout on the balcony taking in the city lights.

Politics and World Events

• Recently a handful of people, likely a very small group associated with the Ungrateful Hyenas, who live thousands of miles from Atlanta and do not participate in the struggle against Cop City, have posted long tracts critiquing “Tiqqunism” on a platform dedicated to hosting communiques of sabotage against Cop City. If thoughtful, capable people come to believe the writings of the hyenas, it is not because they have posed interesting ideas or demonstrated any impressive capacity to act individually or as a group. Rather, their claims resonate only on the basis of their banality. The stories they are bandying out, the pseudo-debate they are attempting to conjure, and the odd slogans they are peddling on the internet magnify the same generalized timidity, powerlessness, and repression that all counter-revolutionary forces strive to produce.

• [...]

• Anti-semitism is the ur-conspiracy theory, deeply baked into the narrative structures by which people apprehend notions of sinister groups, secret plots, internal enemies, etc. Popular narratives about hidden cabals, double allegiance, or sinister forms of power and control draw conceptually from anti-semitism.[1] The formal structure of these accusations about “Tiqqunism” relies on tropes drawn from anti-semitic narratives, and also specifically targets a perceived informal network which happens to include quite a few Jews and is inspired by a jewish theological concept,**** **tikkun olam**.[2]

Technology and Free Software

• I’ve always felt mildly enlightened for having ditched Twitter and Facebook long ago, but not for idealistic reasons – rather, a combination of neither championing longer text interaction, and noticing that’s where the idiots of the species were flocking due (in part) to essentially non-existent barriers to entry.

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