alyaza [they/she]

internet gryphon. admin of Beehaw, mostly publicly interacting with people. nonbinary. they/she

  • 616 Posts
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Joined 3Y ago
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Cake day: Jan 28, 2022

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How Antipoverty Advocates Can Go On The Offensive
> For too long, the left has largely been in a defensive posture when it comes to supporting the poor. With the notable exception of the Affordable Care Act, antipoverty advocates have largely had to focus on preserving as much of New Deal and War on Poverty programs as they can. The political will just has not been there for more funding towards things like universal basic income, public housing, or even for ensuring that food stamp assistance is enough to last an entire month. With the claim that tax-and-transfer options are the most efficient way of addressing equity concerns, while not concerning themselves with whether politicians actually adopted such transfer policies, law and economics scholars provided intellectual cover to the assertion that generally the law should not trouble itself with matters of poverty or inequality. Reagan’s view that government lost the War on Poverty became the popular view, despite the fact that welfare provides invaluable support to millions of people every year. Today’s battles involve questions such as whether it is appropriate to attach work requirements to Medicaid or to require drug testing of those receiving food stamps; long gone is the hope that government funding could eradicate childhood poverty or provide decent housing for everyone. --- > The idea that necessity can excuse otherwise prohibited conduct is not new. It finds expression throughout the law school curriculum, though it often centers on those caught out at sea who have no choice but to do something illegal, such as use someone else’s dock, in order to escape death. While discussions of homeless encampments tend to focus on the use of public parks or other public areas such as overpasses or sidewalks, claims of necessity – as exemplified by the private boat dock – are not limited to public land. The interests of private parties, in land and in goods, are equally vulnerable to the necessity-based claims of those without adequate food or shelter. > > Most of the time the demands that strong property rights impose on non-owners (like the unhoused) are ignored or glossed over, with owners enjoying a default expectation that others will respect their exclusionary rights and that the state will protect those same rights. A robust version of necessity complicates things for owners by making their property less, not more, secure, and making them vulnerable to the claims of those seeking to fulfill their basic needs. > Necessity forces the public and those with private wealth to recognize that so long as public spending does not adequately address their basic needs, the poor have valid claims to public, as well as private, land. Such claims threaten the ordinary expectations of the owners and, as a result, might help change the political landscape such that everyone, not just those sleeping on sidewalks or uncertain about where their next meal will come from, better recognizes the importance of proactively ensuring access to basic needs and putting an end to homelessness and food insecurity.
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How Much Discomfort Is the Whole World Worth?: Movement building requires a culture of listening—not mastery of the right language.
> Organizing is not a process of ideological matchmaking. Most people’s politics will not mirror our own, and even people who identify with us strongly on some points will often differ sharply on others. When organizers do not fully understand each other’s beliefs or identities, people will often stumble and offend one another, even if they earnestly wish to build from a place of solidarity. Efforts to build diverse, intergenerational movements will always generate conflict and discomfort. But the desire to shrink groups down to spaces of easy agreement is not conducive to movement building. > > The forces that oppress us may compete and make war with one another, but when it comes to maintaining the order of capitalism and the hierarchy of white supremacy, they collaborate and work together based on their death-making and eliminationist shared interests. Oppressed people, on the other hand, often demand ideological alignment or even affinity when seeking to interrupt or upend structural violence. This tendency lends an advantage to the powerful that is not easily overcome. > > Put simply, we need more people. What do we mean by this? We are not talking about launching search parties to find an undiscovered army of people with already-perfected politics with whom we will easily and naturally align. Instead, organizing on the scale that our struggles demand means finding common ground with a broad spectrum of people, many of whom we would never otherwise interact with, and building a shared practice of politics in the pursuit of more just outcomes. It’s a process that can bring us into the company of people who share our beliefs quite explicitly, but to create movements, rather than clubhouses, we need to engage with people with whom we do not fully identify and may even dislike. We can build upon our expectations of such people and negotiate protocols around matters of respect, but the truth is, we will sometimes be uncomfortable or even offended. We will, at times, have to constructively critique people’s behavior or simply allow them room to grow. There will be other times, of course, when we have to draw hard lines, but if we cannot organize beyond the bounds of our comfort zones, we will never build movements large enough to combat the forces that would destroy us. --- > This is not to say that we should seek no respite from the messiness and occasional discomfort of large-scale movement work. We all need spaces where we can operate within our comfort zone. Whether these take the shape of a collective, an affinity group, a processing space, a caucus, or a group of friends, we need people with whom we can feel fully seen and heard and with whose values we feel deeply aligned. In such a violent and oppressive world, we are all entitled to some amount of sanctuary. Many organizers have tight-knit political homes, sometimes grounded in shared identity, in addition to participating in broader organizing efforts. > > But broader movements are struggles, not sanctuaries. They are full of contradiction and challenges we may feel unprepared for. > > Effective organizers operate beyond the bounds of their comfort zones, moving into what we might call their “stretch zone,” when necessary. No one has to be able to work with everyone, but how far beyond the bounds of easy agreement can you reach? How much empathy can you extend to people who do not fully understand your identity or experience or who have not had the same access to liberatory ideas? How much discomfort can you navigate for what you believe is truly at stake?
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> Yet my — and I'd imagine your — frustration isn't borne of a hatred of technology, or a dislike of the internet, or a lack of appreciation of what it can do, but the sense that all of this was once better, and that these companies have turned impeding our use of the computer into an incredibly profitable business. > > So much of the pushback I get in my work — and the pushback I've seen toward others — is that I "hate" technology, when I'd like argue that my profound disgust is borne of a great love of technology, and a deep awareness of the positive effects it's had on my life. I do not turn on my computer every day wanting to be annoyed, and I don't imagine any of you do either. We're not logging onto whatever social networks we're on because we are ready to be pissed off. If anything, we'd love to be delighted by the people we chose to connect with and the content we consume, and want to simply go about our business without a litany of microaggressions created by growth-desperation and a lack of responsibility toward the user. > > Technology has, in many ways, stopped being about "using technology to help people do things," or at the very least "help the user do something that they want to do." Software has, as Marc Andreessen said it would in 2011, eaten the world, and has done so in the nakedly-cynical and usurious way that he wanted it to, prioritizing the invasion of our lives through prioritizing growth — and the collection of as much data as possible on the user — over any particular utility or purpose. Andreessen and his ilk saw (and see) software not as a thing that provides value, but as a means for the tech industry to penetrate and "disrupt" as many industries as possible, pushing legacy providers to "transform themselves into software companies" rather than using software to make their products better, describing Pixar — the studio that made movies like Toy Story and Inside Out that was acquired by Disney in 2006 — as a software company rather than a company that makes something using software. > > I realize this sounds like semantics, but let me put it another way: software has, for the tech industry, become far more about extracting economic value than it has in providing it. When the tech industry becomes focused on penetrating markets (to quote Andreessen, "software companies...[taking] over large swathes of the economy") there's little consideration of whether said software is prioritizing the solution to a problem. --- > The problem is that we, as a society, still act like technology is some distinct thing separate from our real lives, and that in turn “technology” is some sort of hobbyist pursuit. Mainstream media outlets have a technology section, with technology reporters that are hired to cover “the technology industry,” optimizing not for any understanding or experience in using technology, but 30,000 foot view of “what the computer people are doing.” > > This may have made more sense 20 years ago — though I’d add that back in 2008 you had multiple national newspapers with technology columnists, and computers were already an integral part of our working and personal lives — but in the year 2025 is a fundamental failure of modern media. Every single person you meet in every single part of your life likely interfaces with technology as much as if not more than they do with other people in the real world, and the technology coverage they read in their newspaper or online doesn’t represent that. It’s why a relatively modest software update for Android or Windows earns vastly more column inches than the fact that Google, a product that we all use, doesn’t really work anymore. > > As a result, it’s worth considering that billions of people actually really like what technology does for them, and in turn are extremely frustrated with what technology does to them. > > The problem is that modern tech media has become oriented around companies and trends rather than the actual experience of a person living in reality. Generative AI would never have been any kind of “movement” or “industry” if the media had approached it from the perspective of a consumer and said “okay, sure, but what does this actually do?” and the same goes for both the metaverse and cryptocurrency.
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> [...]Instead, the general views seem to be either that what Trump is doing is fine and good or that it is unconstitutional, illegal lawlessness — but, in either event and whether implicit or explicit, the end result is inevitable and Trump is winning. > > That’s wrong, and I want to explain why — not because I think we are safe from the very dangerous consequences being discussed but because those consequences are not inevitable even though Trump and Musk and their allies want you to think they are. > > I do not see that as a minor distinction. Trump is a salesman, as is Musk, and they are both trying to sell America on being an authoritarian state — but they can’t do it unless we allow them to do so. > > The courts are not the solution, although courts play a key role. This requires, instead, a whole-of-democracy solution.
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that’s for you to figure out and is, respectfully, not my problem or the problem of anyone else’s moderating this instance. you’ve been told what is expected of you; you can take that or leave it.


> "Today, history is made," EU chief Ursula von der Leyen told a ceremony in Lithuania's capital. "This is freedom, freedom from threats, freedom from blackmail." > > Polish President Andrzej Duda, praised it as a "truly symbolic moment" that would make the region "more secure and resilient". > > "It is the final step towards emancipation from the post-Soviet sphere of dependence," he added. > > The so-called Brell power grid - which stands for Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - is controlled almost entirely by Moscow and has long been seen as a vulnerability for the three Baltic states. > > Now Nato members, they have not purchased electricity from Russia since 2022, but their connection to the Brell grid left them dependent on Moscow for energy flow.
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an encrypted messaging app with a handful of people you categorically trust to never tell on you or in any way implicate you in future criminal behavior, not a federated Reddit clone where you have no control over who sees your message, when, on what terms, and with what associated data. like, don’t be stupid—and at the very least, if you must publicly agitate in this way, don’t say this on a place where your words could have ramifications for people who aren’t large corporations and don’t have the money to get roped into legal trouble


The Sims re-release shows what’s wrong with big publishers and single-player games
> A few days ago, EA re-released two of its most legendary games: The Sims and The Sims 2. Dubbed the "The Legacy Collection," these could not even be called remasters. EA just put the original games on Steam with some minor patches to make them a little more likely to work on some modern machines. > > The emphasis of that sentence should be on the word "some." Forums and Reddit threads were flooded with players saying the game either wouldn't launch at all, crashed shortly after launch, or had debilitating graphical issues. (Patches have been happening, but there's work to be done yet.) --- > Look, it's fine to re-release a game without remastering it. I'm actually glad to see the game's original assets as they always were—it's deeply nostalgic, and there's always a tinge of sadness when a remaster overwrites the work of the original artists. That's not a concern here. > > But if you're going to re-release a game on Steam in 2025, there are minimum expectations—especially from a company with the resources of EA, and even more so for a game that is this important and beloved. > > The game needs to reliably run on modern machines, and it needs to support basic platform features like cloud saves or achievements. It's not much to ask, and it's not what we got.
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it’s fine to believe this is the appropriate remedy but this is not the time and place to write that down, have some basic opsec



Inside Vancouver Library’s Ban on Pro-Palestinian Symbols
> Vancouver Public Library policies that prevent staff from wearing Palestinian symbols have put the library in the spotlight. > > The library’s policies say it can’t become involved in partisan issues and bar employees from wearing political symbols at work. > > After a handful of complaints about pro-Palestinian symbols at library branches this summer, leadership enforced the policies and asked staff who were not Palestinian to stop wearing symbols including kaffiyehs and watermelon pins, which show support. > > Since the Mainlander first reported on the library’s policy this month, some advocates have spoken out against it, accusing the library of selective enforcement on the ban on workplace political symbols.
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i love Faiz but it’s really as simple as “he cannot speak or animate a room to save his life and he’s clearly better working on infrastructure side of things than leading a political party”. there’s a reason he was Bernie’s senior advisor and not a public face of the campaign (and before that an aide to Nancy Pelosi).


(oh, and that doesn’t even touch on Reid Hoffman and George Soros backing Wikler with a fucking PAC for an insider-baseball race like this)


i mean no offense but if we’re worried about the “Democratic establishment” it should probably give people pause that the vast majority of Democratic establishment leadership supported Ben Wikler, while the majority of Ken Martin’s support was from the “grassroots” state party infrastructure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Democratic_National_Committee_chairmanship_election#Endorsements

Dick Durbin, Senate Minority Whip (2005–2007, 2015–2021, 2025–present) from Illinois (1997–present)[66]

Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader (2017–2021, 2025–present) from New York (1999–present)[69]

Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader (2023–present) from NY-08 (2013–present)[70]

Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (2007–2011, 2019–2023) from CA-11 (1987–present)[72]

(also, there is literally no ideological difference between most of these people. do you think Ben Wikler for example is pro-DSA? lol)



> There are now multiple lawsuits challenging provisions in President Donald Trump’s anti-transgender January 20 executive order defining “sex” that would force transgender women in prison to be housed in men’s facilities and result in the loss of transgender-related medical care. > > The first of those, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, resulted in an order late on January 26 prohibiting the Bureau of Prisons from transferring Maria Moe (a pseudonym) from the women’s facility where she has been to a men’s facility, according to Moe’s lawyers. The case was fully sealed at that point, however, with nothing available on the public docket. > > “The courts remain an important backstop,” Jennifer Levi, one of the woman’s lawyers, told Law Dork. “This is a great first step in the case.”
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> Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has criticised Friedrich Merz, her successor as leader of the country’s conservatives, for pushing through proposals on migration and asylum with the backing of the far-right AfD. > > In a rare intervention in public affairs since stepping down from politics in December 2021, Merkel said that Merz, who is tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor, had in effect performed a U-turn. > > On her website, she wrote that Merz, head of the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance, had said in a speech last November that he was against passing policies with the support of the generally shunned AfD, even it was by “accident”. > > She said she stood by the longstanding conviction that there should never be any association between the mainstream parties and the AfD.
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Early Ontario election official after Ford meets with lieutenant-governor
> Ontario Premier Doug Ford has officially triggered an early provincial election for Feb. 27 after meeting with Ontario's lieutenant-governor, his office confirmed. > > Ford visited Lt.-Gov. Edith Dumont on Tuesday afternoon to ask her to dissolve the 43rd parliament of the Province of Ontario. She accepted his request. > > Ford has said he needs a new mandate from the electorate in order to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump, something he repeated at a news conference Tuesday morning ahead of his visit to the lieutenant-governor.
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> As it stands today, January 27, there are 41 current and eight future judicial vacancies. That’s less than half of the over 100 vacancies Trump inherited the first time around. And unlike in 2017, when Trump started with 17 vacancies on the courts of appeals, the vast majority of these openings—43 of them—are for district court seats. Thanks to then-Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin’s stubborn insistence on adhering to the blue slip tradition, thus allowing Republicans a de facto veto over Biden’s nominees in red states, nearly all of these vacancies are in states with two Republican senators. With a sycophantic Republican-controlled Senate at his beck and call, Trump should have no issues filling those vacancies. > > Since Trump’s election, only four Article III judges–all district judges appointed by President George W. Bush–have created new current or future vacancies for Trump to fill: Judges Frank Whitney of the Western District of North Carolina, L. Scott Coogler of the Northern District of Alabama, Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky, and James Browning of the District of New Mexico. Looking ahead to where more vacancies may arise, there are 72 Republican-appointed judges—26 appeals court and 46 district court judges—currently eligible to retire, and 43 more—nine and 34, respectively—who will become eligible to retire by the end of 2028.
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> Filipino digital workers launched a coalition to lobby for labor and free speech protections in the workplace as artificial intelligence is deployed. The AI tools raise new risks, and the firing of a worker who spoke to Rest of World in November signals an industrywide “code of silence” around the impact of AI on the workplace, the group said. > > “We call on the government for a proactive and inclusive policy-making, as workers face threats of job losses, diminishing wages, and other harms,” Lean Porquia, convenor of the coalition, said in a press statement. Porquia is also head of research for the BPO Industry Employees’ Network, an organization focused on the rights of business process outsourcing workers. > > The Coalition of Digital Employees – Artificial Intelligence, or Code AI, was prompted by Rest of World reporting that led to investigations and the termination of a worker, Code AI members said at a press briefing in Manila. The report, published in November 2024, described advanced AI tools deployed by Concentrix Corporation and Accenture — including AI co-pilots and sentiment analysis deployed for American Express and Meta, Facebook’s parent company — that made work both more efficient and demanding, according to the workers.
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> The first ever skatepark in Baghdad is set to open next week, on February 1. > > Located at the grounds of the Ministry of Youth and Sports in the Iraqi capital’s centre, entry will be free-of-charge for the public. > > The skatepark has been five years in the making, and is being constructed by the Make Life Skate Life project, in collaboration with Baghdad Skatepark Project, Un Ponte Per, Iraq’s Ministry of Youth and Sports, Suli Skatepark and others.
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NDP MP Angus calls for investigation into Elon Musk over potential election interference
> New Democrat MP Charlie Angus is calling on Elections Canada to launch an investigation into Elon Musk and his social media platform X, saying he is concerned about potential interference by the tech billionaire in the next federal election. > > In a two-page letter to Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault, Angus said Musk has been playing a role in recent elections in a variety of countries, donating millions of dollars to conservative candidates and using X, formerly known as Twitter, to amplify the political messages of candidates he favours. > > "He has formed alliances with right-wing populist leaders, amplified extremist influencers and spread hate disinformation towards marginal groups," Angus wrote.
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the tendency to just post bills that have been introduced without context is frustrating; actual reporting on the subject makes it clear this is not going to pass and even other Republican lawmakers are deeply skeptical of its legality and constitutionality (because it’s neither):

House Rep. Jansen Owen, R-Poplarville, vice chairman of the Judiciary B committee (one of two House committees that the bill has been referred to), expressed deep skepticism about Keen’s bill.

“I’m concerned about the constitutionality of some of those provisions,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 24.

The Republican lawmaker explained that he had not personally reviewed the bill, but he stressed that determining the legality of immigrants was above the jurisdiction of the state to begin with.

“That’s within the purview of the federal government,” he said, adding he supports local law enforcement referring detainees to federal immigration services. But “the state doesn’t need to get in the business of enforcing federal immigration law,” he concluded.

this is to say nothing of bounty hunters, who would actually enforce the law and have not been consulted on this bill because it’s not serious. the primary value of the bill is earned media stochastic terrorism, which is aided by posting it without this context. (this is an issue with trans-related bills too and has been for years.) please don’t aid in that–contextualizing this stuff is especially important now that organizations and people might need to triage their battles.


> Overview > > Create: Protection Pixel is a popular Create addon with over half a million downloads. It is available on CurseForge and was formerly available on Modrinth; its page has now been taken down. It was made with MCreator. > > Ever since version 1.1.2, the mod .jar bundles the Amplitude Java SDK under com.amplitude, and the org.json:json library (a dependency of Amplitude SDK) under org.json. Amplitude is a software analytics company. This is, obviously, unusual code to find in a Minecraft mod. > > The mod also contains four classes placed under com.brightsdk: Device, Main, SessionTracker, and Storage. > > The code under com.brightsdk does not appear to be correctly activated, but if it was correctly called, it would collect the following datapoints: > > - your device vendor and platform, > - your operating system name and version, > - the total amount of RAM in your computer, > - the currently in-use amount of RAM, > - the current CPU usage, > > and upload them (together with your IP address) to Amplitude's tracking URL at https://api2.amplitude.com/2/httpapi using the API key 7cce83b37fb5848cad6789d71a39b809. The code would send the data every minute at first, but gradually slow down to every 30 minutes.
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it’s very funny because at the absolute most this maybe saves like, what, two steps in the best case? AI is so bad at this stuff that you have to human-edit it into something that looks good most of the time anyways


> In my recently published book, Dignity Not Debt, I argue that when it comes to debt, policymakers should turn away from the free-market framework and toward the principle of human dignity. The free market approach, which is grounded in an ideal of efficiency, has been effective in large part because it purports to offer a clear and universal north star to guide debt policy. Therefore, if we are to replace it, we must choose a new guiding principle that is equally clear and universally understood. The principle of human dignity is the best candidate because it captures our shared understanding that everyone possesses an inherent dignity which others must respect. At its core, the principle of human dignity recognizes the intrinsic worth of every person. A foundational concept in human rights law, the principle is already deployed around the globe and codified in dozens of human rights instruments. It carries substantive human rights obligations, including rights to privacy and due process, rights to be free from discrimination, and rights to housing, education, and water, among others. > > What would America’s household debt landscape look like with human dignity as our north star? How would we decide what credit to encourage and what to discourage or abolish? I offer three tenets, based on the overarching principle of human dignity, that are applicable to debt policy. These tenets serve as a foundation for a new taxonomy that reflects the reality of household debt and provides policymakers with tools for crafting just and sensible debt policy. First, respect for human dignity requires that each person be able to meet their needs and enjoy life without degradation and fear. Second, respect for human dignity requires that no person be treated as a means to another’s end. Third, respect for human dignity requires true equality—not just equal treatment, but a redistribution of power, wealth, and resources to ensure equal dignity for all.
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> Resident Evil and Street Fighter series developer Capcom is experimenting with introducing new technology, including generative AI, to tackle the ballooning costs and man-hours required for game development. In a recent interview with Google Cloud Japan, Kazuki Abe, a technical director at Capcom, gave some specific examples of what this involves. Based on his explanation, it doesn't seem like Capcom is trying to use AI to generate anything directly related to gameplay, stories or character designs. > > According to Abe, one of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive parts of game development is coming up with the "hundreds of thousands of unique ideas" needed to create the in-game environment. For example, if you want to put a TV inside of your game, you can't just use an existing product as is – you need to think of a fictional TV design from scratch, including the manufacturer's logo and everything else about the object.
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take a week off, you were told the issue politely and this is not an acceptable way to respond


> So what would a fragmented America look like? > > Likely similar to America’s early days that repeated itself during the pandemic where the most powerful states were functionally regional authorities. California is the fifth-largest economy in the world. Texas is ninth, bigger than Canada, while New York is eleventh, just ahead of Russia. Florida is the sixteenth largest economy in the world, just behind Mexico, while Illinois is twentieth, just behind Saudi Arabia. Like with the Virginian slave economy of old, smaller states around them would be pulled in by the gravitational force of this power, forming regional governing coalitions along natural economic and social interests. > > This splintering doesn’t need a decisive moment where the United States of America all of a sudden is not–it can just be the accelerating result of the degradation of our system we have been watching unfold in real time, as state governments step in to fill the growing void left by the federal government, and one day we all wake up and realize that California is functionally the Western states’ federal government. > > But it could be driven by a decisive moment where the American system irrevocably breaks in some way. Imagine a future where California tries to do something really ambitious to try to fight an exceedingly destructive climate crisis, and the Supreme Court tells them they cannot do it. Say California invokes James Madison’s belief, supported by all Supreme Courts before the Roberts Court, that states can defy the Court, and they decide that it’s more important to stop the flames from enveloping their state than to adhere to the partisan whims of a corrupt institution which awarded itself God-like power in the 19th century to functionally declare slavery legal and spark a Civil War. What happens if the fifth-largest economy in the world just goes ahead and does it anyway? Does the Supreme Court send in the army? How does this work?
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> [...]rather than studying the world as it is in an empirical sense, identifying problems, and proposing solutions, Trumpism starts with “solutions” consistent with its racist and xenophobic worldview—extrapolated from slogans like “Make America Great Again,” “Build the Wall,” “Drain the Swamp”—and then goes in search of “real” problems to justify their implementation. > > The press and Democratic Party have, unfortunately, gamely played along—denouncing Trumpism’s false statements of fact but largely conceding the underlying “problems” as worthy policy debates. For example, outlets like the Atlantic and New York Times insist on pretending that gender nonconformity among children is a serious “problem” worthy of national political debate when less than 0.1 percent of U.S. minors take gender-affirming medication. > > The same goes for immigration. Mainstream newspapers and cable outlets have largely narrated as a “crisis” the Biden administration’s mismanagement of a dysfunctional asylum process—dysfunction, worth noting, that was deliberately sown by Republican governors to justify their racist anti-migrant policies. This crisis framing has been readily adopted by “Blue State” Democrats like New York City mayor Eric Adams and New York governor Kathy Hochul to obfuscate their own mismanagement of the issue. > > Journalists, as Stuart Hall and his collaborators once argued, are “secondary definers.” Their commitment to “objectivity” means that they can’t weigh in on matters of public policy directly. Instead, they rely upon experts and public officials as “primary definers.” “Effectively, the primary definition sets the limit for all subsequent discussions by framing the what the problem is,” Hall and colleagues wrote.
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> Long known as one of Africa's great beach destinations, a new generation of Sierra Leoneans is eager to show visitors that the formerly war-torn nation is now safe and reintroduce it to the world. > > Sitting in the shade of a palm tree on Tokeh Beach, one of Sierra Leone's many postcard-worthy, white-sand waterfronts, Peter Momoh Bassie told me his story. "I am not ashamed to say I was part of the rebels because I was captured by force," he said, looking out over the emerald-coloured water. "I never killed anyone," he added. > > Stories like Bassie's abound in Sierra Leone, a small nation in West Africa with more than 300km of coastline sandwiched between Guinea and Liberia. The country's 11-year civil war that ended in 2002 killed more than 50,000 people and displaced 2.6 million more. The rebels captured Bassie when he was just 11 years old. He was held captive for six years, managing to escape – and get caught again – three times. > > Today, Bassie works as a tour guide for Tourism Is Life, one of many Sierra Leonean travel companies eager to show the world that the nation is now safe and introduce visitors to its many rainforests, beaches and rich cultural experiences. --- > Retelling stories like these is at the heart of what Bimbola Carrol does. Twenty years ago he founded VSL Travel after seeing mostly negative coverage of his country. "I felt that if we were looking to get back on our feet, we needed to show people another side of Sierra Leone," he told me. > > Today, Carrol organises a range of trips: to the small village of Rogbonko in the Northern Province where travellers can stay in thatched-roof huts with the local community, or to the Western Peninsula near Freetown to spot the white-necked rockfowl, one of Africa's rarest and most peculiar birds. "Everyone who comes to Sierra Leone falls in love with our nation," said Carrol. "We are lagging behind other countries, but the world is starting to take note. For me, that is cause to be optimistic about the future."
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Freeland pitches herself as tested Trump negotiator, as protesters disrupt Liberal leadership launch
> Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland laid out her case Sunday to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and take on U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, positioning herself as "a battle-tested leader with the scars to prove it." > > But her message was repeatedly drowned out by pro-Palestinian protesters in the crowd who shouted down Freeland with calls of "genocide supporter" and loud banging. > > At least a dozen hecklers were escorted out, according to reporters in the room, delaying her speech. > > Once she got back on track, Freeland pitched herself as a veteran negotiator and leader with eyes on the Canadian economy. > > Freeland's official campaign launch comes nearly a month after she resigned from Trudeau's cabinet and one day before Trump takes office, two factors she leaned on in her campaign launch speech.
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Politics All the Way Down - Critics are right: the algorithms that increasingly run the world can be dangerous. Are human systems always better?
> A new common sense has emerged regarding the perils of predictive algorithms. As the groundbreaking work of scholars like Safiya Noble, Cathy O’Neil, Virginia Eubanks, and Ruha Benjamin has shown, big data tools—from crime predictors in policing to risk predictors in finance—increasingly govern our lives in ways unaccountable and often unknown to the public. They replicate bias, entrench inequalities, and distort institutional aims. They devalue much of what makes us human: our capacities to exercise discretion, act spontaneously, and reason in ways that can’t be quantified. And far from being objective or neutral, technical decisions made in system design embed the values, aims, and interests of mostly white, mostly male technologists working in mostly profit-driven enterprises. Simply put, these tools are dangerous; in O’Neil’s words, they are “weapons of math destruction.” > > These arguments offer an essential corrective to the algorithmic solutionism peddled by Big Tech—the breathless enthusiasm that promises, in the words of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, to “make everything we care about better.” But they have also helped to reinforce a profound skepticism of this technology as such. Are the political implications of algorithmic tools really so different from those of our decision-making systems of yore? If human systems already entrench inequality, replicate bias, and lack democratic legitimacy, might data-based algorithms offer some promise in addition to peril? If so, how should we approach the collective challenge of building better institutions, both human and machine?
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the cowardice here is really almost entirely the DEA’s; unfortunately, there is a laborious process that stuff like this is obliged to go through, and the DEA have been dragging their feet on every part of that process almost three years now (which is when the study of rescheduling began). this has even and increasingly been against the recommendations of other government agencies, because apparently we stuff all of our drug conservatives in the agency now


> While DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John Mulrooney rejected key arguments from rescheduling proponents about how alleged improper communications and witness selection decisions by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram warranted the agency’s removal from the process altogether, he ultimately granted a request for leave to file an interlocutory appeal—canceling the scheduled January 21 merit-based hearing and staying the proceedings for at least three months. > > And although Mulrooney cited statutory restrictions on his office’s ability to take actions such as removing the DEA as the “proponent” of the proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), he sharply criticized the agency over various procedural missteps that he argued contributed to a delay of the rulemaking, potentially indefinitely as a new administration is set to come into office January 20. > > Central to the movants’ motion to remove the DEA are allegations that certain agency officials conspired with anti-rescheduling witnesses who were selected for the hearing. The judge didn’t outright deny those claims and, in fact, noted a “disturbing and embarrassing revelation” about such communications. However, he said even if those claims were substantiated, they wouldn’t on their own constitute an “‘irrevocable taint’” that will affect the ultimate outcome of the proceedings.” Therefore, he said, it wouldn’t affect his office’s authority to remove the agency from the hearings.
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> Finally, Mark Zuckerberg can do whatever he wants, as opposed to the past 20 years, where it's hard to argue that he's faced an unrelenting series of punishments. Zuckerberg's net worth recently hit $213 billion, he's running a company with a market capitalization of over $1.5 trillion that he can never be fired from, he owns a 1400-acre compound in Hawaii, and while dealing with all this abject suffering, he was forced to half-heartedly apologize during a senate hearing where he was tortured (translation: made to feel slightly uncomfortable) after only having six years to recover from the last time when nothing happened to him in a senate hearing. > > Sarcasm aside, few living people have had it easier than Mark Zuckerberg, a man who has been insulated from consequence, risk, and responsibility for nearly twenty years. The sudden (and warranted) hysteria around these monstrous changes has an air of surprise, framing Meta (and Zuckerberg's) moves as a "MAGA-tilt" to "please Donald Trump," which I believe is a comfortable way to frame a situation that is neither sudden nor surprising. > > Mere months ago, the media was fawning over Mark Zuckerberg's new look, desperate to hear about why he's wearing gold chains, declaring that he had "the swagger of a Roman emperor" and that he had (and I quote the Washington Post) transformed himself from "a dorky, democracy-destroying CEO into a dripped-out, jacked AI accelerationist in the eyes of potential Meta recruits." Zuckerberg was, until this last week, being celebrated for the very thing people are upset about right now — flimsy, self-conscious and performative macho bullshit that only signifies strength to weak men and those credulous enough to accept it, which in this case means "almost every major media outlet." The only thing he did differently this time was come out and say it. After all, there was no punishment or judgment for his last macho media cycle, and if anything he proved that many will accept whatever he says in whatever way he does it. --- > Meta hasn't "made a right-wing turn." It’s been an active arm of the right wing media for nearly a decade, actively empowering noxious demagogues like Alex Jones, allowing him to evade bans and build massive private online groups on the platform to disseminate content. A report from November 2021 by Media Matters found that Facebook had tweaked its news algorithm in 2021, helping right-leaning news and politics pages to outperform other pages using "sensational and divisive content." Another Media Matters report from 2023 found that conservatives were continually earning more total interactions than left or non-aligned pages between January 1 2020 and December 31 2022, even as the company was actively deprioritizing political content. > > A 2024 report from non-profit GLAAD found that Meta had continually allowed widespread anti-trans hate content across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, with the company either claiming that the content didn't violate its community standards or ignoring reports entirely. While we can — and should — actively decry Meta's disgusting new standards, it's ahistorical to pretend that this was a company that gave a shit about any of this stuff, or took it seriously, or sought to protect marginalized people.
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> Like it or not, horror gaming is often built on jump scares. Deriding a good cheap scare ignores the endorphin rush that draws so many players to the genre, in the same way that the "elevated horror" trend forfeits some of the soul of schlocky slasher flicks and ghost movies. Don’t get me wrong, Silent Hill and Alan Wake deserve their flowers - but even those games would wither on the screen if Pyramid Head didn’t bust through a wall from time to time. > > One unsung jump scare game in particular pioneered horror in the internet age, blazing everywhere from nascent social media to major television networks. In fact, if you had an internet connection circa 2005, there’s a good chance you played it. Alas, it was too ahead of its time, too successful at leveraging virality before viral horror was sought after. Next time you see a streamer throw their headphones across the room in fright, beware: the spirit of Scary Maze Game is right behind you. --- > Like Rick Rolls and chain emails, "screamers" propagated from the ability to share media with little pretext. Screamers existed before The Maze in the form of short animations and videos—even inspiring a series of German energy drink commercials—but Winterrowd’s game set itself apart by dint of being a game. You had to initiate the jump scare yourself, and doing so required sharp focus. It was less like watching a car crash and more like cranking a jack-in-the-box. > > Understandably, reactions were big. And if you couldn’t stand by your victim and watch their freakout yourself, you were in luck, because there was this shiny new website called YouTube. Reaction videos are The Maze’s first milestone contribution to online horror, and they were responsible for the game’s mainstream popularity. Internet historian Jake Lee found Maze reaction videos as early 2006, which were shown on Web Junk, The Soup, and America’s Funniest Home Videos (which was the style at the time) and parodied on Saturday Night Live in 2010.
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> It was late at night, and Darim's animation studio had just finished designing a new look for a character in one of South Korea's most popular video games, MapleStory. > > Darim was proud of her work. So, sitting alone on the floor of her small studio apartment, she posted the trailer on social media. Almost immediately, she was flooded with thousands of abusive messages, including death and rape threats. > > Young male gamers had taken issue with a single frame in the trailer, in which the female character could be seen holding her thumb and forefinger close together. > > They thought it resembled a hand gesture used by a radical online feminist community almost a decade ago to poke fun at the size of Korean men's penises.
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[archive.is link](https://archive.ph/EUOoC) > In amongst all this, key figures from within the wider WordPress community have stepped forward. Joost de Valk — creator of WordPress-focused SEO tool Yoast (and former marketing and communications’ lead for the WordPress Foundation) — last month published his “vision for a new WordPress era,” where he discussed the potential for “federated and independent repositories.” Karim Marucchi, CEO of enterprise web consulting firm Crowd Favorite, echoed similar thoughts in a separate blog post. > > WP Engine, meanwhile, indicated it was on standby to lend a corporate hand. --- > Earlier this week, Automattic announced it would reduce its contribution to the core WordPress open source project to align with WP Engine’s own contribution, a metric measured in weekly hours. This spurred de Valk to take to X on Friday to indicate that he was willing to lead on the next release of WordPress, with Marucchi adding that his “team stands ready.” > > Collectively, de Valk and Marucchi contribute around 10 hours per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source project. However, Mullenweg said that to give their independent effort the “push it needs to get off the ground,” he was deactivating their WordPress.org accounts. > > “I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort,” Mullenweg wrote. > > At the same time, Mullenweg revealed he was also deactivating the accounts of three other people, with little explanation given: Sé Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. Reed, it’s worth noting, is president and CEO of a newly incorporated non-profit called the WP Community Collective, which is setting out to serve as a “neutral home for collaboration, contribution, and resources” around WordPress and the broader open source ecosystem.
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> Last month, 461 video game workers with Microsoft’s ZeniMax Online Studios announced they were unionizing with the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees–Communications Workers of America (CODE-CWA). ZeniMax employees join over six thousand workers across the tech and video game industry in the United States and Canada who have now unionized with CODE-CWA since its creation in 2020. That now includes unions at major video game studios like Sega of America, Blizzard, and Bethesda, as well as games like World of Warcraft. > > For Jacobin, CODE-CWA senior director of organizing Tom Smith recently moderated a roundtable with a number of video game workers and organizers who have been trying to unionize the industry in recent years. They discussed how union efforts at their workplaces started, how unions have helped workers navigate difficult times in the industry, and what might be next for the labor movement in video games.
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> Dreams On A Pillow is a stealth adventure that tells the story of a young mother during the Nakba - the 1948 ethnic cleansing, displacement, and cultural suppression of Palestinian Arabs by Israel. As its funding campaign puts it, it’s a game about "a land full of people being made into a people without land." > > The campaign still has a few days to go, but surpassed its initial goal earlier this week. Abu-Eideh says the reaction has been overwhelming. "I know people care," he says, but he never expected so much support, and so many kind words. The funding launched with the acknowledgement that he’d need more than twice the goal to fully "pay for salaries, outsourcing, and asset creation". But this does mean he and a small team of artists, calligraphers, and coders can begin production. > > "We needed talented people who believed in this project," Abu-Eideh says. "That’s like the basic requirement for something like this, because it's not a normal project. You need people that believe in your cause". While the team and he prepare to move on from pre-production, I ask what his day-to-day currently looks like from his home in the West Bank. > > "It’s very hard, daily life. Just taking your kids to the school is a big deal because you don't know which road you should take. You don't know where the checkpoints are and if they’re going to block the roads today or not. On a daily basis, there are multiple attacks in different villages in cities by the soldiers or by the settlers. Burning houses. Cutting trees and burning trees. Destroying the main roads. So it’s kind of the daily hustle that we live in."
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> The rule will affect more than 15 million Americans, raising their credit scores by an estimated average of 20 points. No Americans will have medical debt listed on their credit report — down from approximately 46 million Americans who had this kind of debt on their credit report in 2020. > > The vice president also announced that states and localities have already utilized American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds to support the elimination of over $1 billion in medical debt for more than 700,000 Americans and that jurisdictions are on track to eliminate approximately $15 billion in medical debt for up to almost 6 million Americans. > > “No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency,” Harris said in a statement Tuesday. “This will be lifechanging for millions of families, making it easier for them to be approved for a car loan, a home loan, or a small-business loan. As someone who has spent my entire career fighting to protect consumers and lower medical bills, I know that our historic rule will help more Americans save money, build wealth, and thrive.”