📡 – 2025-03-23
Addicted to the entire world
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I’ve been considering screen time lately as one may consider the ocean while stranded out in it, or a snakebite. What is even inside the phone? (Except for the entire world, to which I am repentantly addicted.) It’s easy to think “no”, but approximately lifting the sky to then do nothing.
Anyway, on to some stuff I liked…
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Flora | Hiroshi Yoshimura
11 track album
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On the 📚 side of 👂
Police Unions in the Labor Movement | KBOO
Kristian Williams, member of AFSCME 88 and author of "Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America" as well as the forthcoming book "Policing the Progressive City" about the history of policing in Portland, Oregon from colonization to the uprising of 2020, discusses the topic of police unions. Williams in particular analyses the current controversy surrounding the attempt to bring the Portland Police Association as members into the AFL-CIO Northwest Oregon Labor Council.
Is an Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence Possible? | TechPolicy.Press
A podcast conversation with Dan McQuillan, author of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, published by Bristol University Press.
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ICE's Crackdown on Visa Holders and US travelers: Steps to Plan & Protect Yourself
ICE's Crackdown on Visa Holders and US travelers: Steps to Plan & Protect Yourself
What everyone needs to know about USCIS, CBP, and ICE extreme vetting policies.
To readers: this is a very long, detailed newsletter, chock full of specific steps to take for US travelers and different visa holders to increase their security while entering, traveling, and exiting the US. Given the rapid escalation of Trump 2.0 crackdowns and moves to criminalize anyone deemed critical of its policies, it’s essential for anyone traveling to review needed documents and consider precautionary steps to assure safer travel and re-entry. […] I’ll update it regularly. — Anne-christine d’Adesky
See also the EFF’s guide regarding border searches
Resistance is alive and well in the United States
Resistance is alive and well in the United States | Waging Nonviolence
Protests of Trump may not look like the mass marches in 2017, but they're far more numerous and frequent — and also becoming more strategic.
In fact, our research shows that street protests today are far more numerous and frequent than skeptics might suggest. Although it is true that the reconfigured Peoples’ March of 2025 — held on Jan. 18 — saw lower turnout than the 2017 Women’s March, that date also saw the most protests in a single day for over a year. And since Jan. 22, we’ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.
An Interview With A Fired NOAA Director
An Interview With A Fired NOAA Director | Defector
In 2006, by the time the scientist Sarah Cooley finished graduate school in marine science, oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest had already begun dying mysteriously and dramatically—unable to form shells. By 2008, the largest oyster hatchery on the West Coast suffered losses of 80 percent. Hatcheries spent thousands of dollars stamping out any possible […]
Even though the program, you know, only received $17 million last year in federal appropriations, we were able to punch above our weight, where we're actually getting a whole lot more benefit for every dollar put in because of the effort on partnerships and collaborative goal-setting and really thoughtful division of labor between us and other programs. That takes time. It takes time and it takes mental space to sit down and say, well, OK, how can we both get our goals met, while also doing some really cool stuff in the in-between space? And frankly, when you're constantly having to respond to "What were the five things you did last week?" and "You need to scrub your website of these terms" and "You can't actually buy anything because your credit limits have been destroyed," it does not give you the mental space to actually build anything. You're just bailing at this point.
In Your Face: The Brutal Aesthetics of MAGA
In Your Face: The Brutal Aesthetics of MAGA – Mother Jones
Does proximity to power rely on a specific look?
Although plastic surgery and injectables are enjoyed far beyond conservative circles, what distinguishes Mar-a-Lago face from what you and I might contemplate getting done on an especially self-flagellating day is the aggressive, overt nature with which MAGA-ites seem to pursue it. “Over the top, overdone, ridiculous,” is how one New York plastic surgeon I spoke with described it.
“What we’re seeing with something like Mar-a-Lago face is a swing back toward [an era of plastic surgery when] people can tell that people have had work done,” Alka Menon, a professor of sociology at Yale University, told me.
Why Hasn’t Columbia U. Sued to Protect Itself?
https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-hasnt-columbia-u-sued-to-protect-itself[…]
A critical bibliography about LibGen, the pirate site that Meta used for AI training
A critical bibliography about LibGen, the pirate site that Meta used for AI training | Martin Paul Eve | Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing
Yesterday, academic social media went into overdrive as many intellectuals discovered LibGen (“Library Genesis”) for the first time, thanks to an article and tool in The Atlantic.
In any case, here’s a secondary reading list of some of the material that’s out there on LibGen (the books platform) and Sci-Hub (articles and journals). As a technical point: LibGen also acts as the backing store for Sci-Hub, Finally, more recent platforms like Anna’s Archive are not that well covered in the secondary literature yet.
the eternal present, or: we need to destroy phone
the eternal present - by kate wagner - the late review
or: we need to destroy phone
The smartphone has deskilled seemingly everything, even something as fundamental to human life as reading. But it’s especially deskilled political organizing. Perhaps a subconscious reason why the Left puts so much hope in the labor movement is because organizing one’s workplace is a largely offline endeavor. It takes place face to face in a spatially and temporally anchored place where everyone, despite all that may divide them, is subjected to the same material conditions, the same injustices. The most pro-social idea on earth is that only through collective power can we, the individual, make for ourselves a better life, and let me tell you, the tech billionaires do not want you to know that.
The Myth of Continuity in American Gun Culture
The Myth of Continuity in American Gun Culture — California Law Review
The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen elevated history, text, and tradition as the sole criteria for assessing the constitutionality of firearms restrictions. Gun rights advocates have responded to Bruen with a wave of Second Amendment ch
This Article begins by arguing that whereas today’s gun culture is consumerist, government-phobic, and individualist, early America’s gun culture was utilitarian, government-led, and collective. It then presents detailed critiques of the iterations of the myth of continuity being deployed to overturn laws regulating assault weapons, large-capacity magazines, and ghost guns. These were nonexistent or impractical technologies in the Founding era, no more likely to attract regulatory attention than jetpacks in our own times. Once these weapons finally became reliable enough consumer items to cause problems in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, regulation quickly followed. Put into proper historical context, then, assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and ghost guns represented “dramatic technological changes” that provoked “unprecedented societal concerns.” Regulations addressing those concerns should be found constitutional under Bruen’s history-centric framework.
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You Are Witnessing the Death of American Capitalism
THIS CHANNEL IS NOW MINE. Bye Seeker+! What's next?
My pal Trace got the Seeker+ channel back from the folks who bought it! This is … basically unheard of.
Svetlana Maraš @ BERLIN SOLO IMPRO 2024
Jaap Blonk @ BERLIN SOLO IMPRO 2024
👆 for folks who listened to the most recent Never Post.
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The Shaman, the Outsider, and the Diet of Worms by LITHOBREAKERS, Stanwixbuster, COMPUTERMILK
Revisited 1749
I could not even begin to explain this to you and so I will not try. Give yourself some time; don’t miss the PDF download.
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The big news last week is that Never Post is now distributed by Radiotopia! Which is extremely exciting. We made a 10 minute explainer that’s all about what that means and you can listen to it here. A new ep will be out this week.
New Fun City came out on March 18th; the team escapes the unspeakable horrors of the Circularium at the bottom of Jast Reclamation by the skin of their teeth, and are tossed like seeds to the wind. Where do they land? Find out here.
I talked with Matt Silverman on his podcast Influence about my so-called career in media, how I got to where I am now and what it’s like being here at this particular moment of media-history. You can listen to that wherever you get your pods, or you can watch us chat on YT here.
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That’s all I have for you! Drop me a line in the comments below (you may have to click a link) or respond to this email. See you in a couple weeks; stay safe out there.