bmoreisapunkrocktown

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

It's amazing how many notes these posts get, as compared to posts about making life better for yourself and your community. I've seen those posts go by with little fanfare. I've made those posts that go by with little fanfare.

I've had people like this say point blank that community care was less important than supporting future lobbying opportunities or organizations that perpetuate harm.

I've seen people like this say that reporting homeless encampments counts as community care, because having their belongings thrown away will galvanize them into accepting police intervention.

I've seen people like this say that racism is "pointless infighting", that asking people to use masks in public spaces is abusive, that caring about Gaza is a political derailment, that voting for a third party candidate has never worked, that no revolution has ever been successful (so therefore moderate changes to the existing system is inconceivable and therefore stupid to push for.)

Making life better for yourself isn't an inherently noble goal, because for [white] people it seems to somehow exclusively come at the expense of others. But if you're focusing on yourself and your community, where is your community coming into it? Who in your community is doing the work? It fundamentally doesn't matter, because you actually don't give a shit about your or any community, and you never will.

It's perfectly fine to keep that to your fucking self.

something has gone deeply wrong when "focusing pragmatically on issues you can influence and working to make life better for yourself and your community" is considered an unserious distraction while "endlessly exposing yourself to media about distressing situations you can't control" is considered political engagement

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It's insane how the same set of news has been coming out of Gaza every single day for the past 14 months and I know for a fact people have grown numb to it; numb to reading the numbers or headlines like "Israeli strike targets school" because Israel made it so. Israel has bombed the first hospital in this aggression and pretended it wasn't them. Saw how quickly the outrage died down so now they have practically destroyed the entire healthcare system in Gaza.

A genocide is being carried out against the besieged population of Gaza and you are bearing witness to it. Your one mission is NOT to grow accustomed to the mention of these crimes. Repeat things over and over again. So long as this Zionist entity is lying, you are going to have to repeat things until you don't have to anymore. Keep talking about Gaza.

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Anyway, I'm bringing this back because there's a whole ass post going around about how to tackle the "eugenics abortion" issue that actually doesn't mention the well-being of these disabled children except as a throw away.

We must do away with the nuclear family and we must fundamentally change the societal view of having and raising children in order to come away from "eugenics abortion".

Changing or adjusting what society considers to be the "value" of a disabled child to make it higher and therefore more acceptable to have a disabled child 1) isn't actually about the child and 2) isn't addressing the fundamental issue that children are whole ass human beings and not couches.

Eugenics is explicitly tied to the view of children as "things" that someone owns and controls, and until we do away with that idea, we can never be truly free of eugenics.

And that sucks, but there are a lot of people who claim to be anti eugenics who still very rigidly hold on to the idea of the nuclear family and the "right" to have a child, and that is not and never will be an anti-eugenics opinion, nor will it ever lead to any better conditions for disabled children.

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

I remember an article I read a while back by a phone sex operator who was talking about sex work as a labor industry, and she was saying that one of the best and most freeing things about her job was the ability to hang up.

She said that she used to work at a hotel, and every night a man would call and masturbate over the phone. The more uncomfortable the front desk operator was, the more he did it. It was not only company policy that they couldn't end the call no matter what, but when reported to the police, they didn't do anything because it isn't illegal (apparently).

The difference between working at the hotel and working for the phone line was that 1) she could work from home and 2) that when a caller broke the rules, she could hang up. And she could block them so they didn't call again.

What constitutes a threat and what constitutes a crime are always things that are weighted against populations they're meant to be weighted against. Many years ago, someone was arrested for making fun of the police on Twitter. Those same police told someone being stalked and harassed through Twitter that there simply was no way to track individual accounts and they should just log off.

I think there's something to be said that saying the words "Deny, Defend, Depose, you're next" to an insurance sales rep can get you arrested for 'threats of mass homicide' or whatever with a threat of 15 years in prison

But when I was a manager in a fast food restaurant I've had customers throw food at me, demand for my personal phone number with an added threat of "Well I'll just have to FIND it", customers charging past the front counter to physically intimidate me and my coworkers, screaming and swearing, demands to know what time I get out of work, demands to know when my manager would be at work as a threat, people sitting in their car waiting for me to finish closing because they were angry at me, causing me to stay in the office watching the camera waiting for them to drive away...

But none of those incidents are arrest-able offenses, not one, any time I called the cops on any customer I would just hear excuses like " "there isn't anything illegal about calling a restaurant", that nothing physical happened and therefore there's nothing they could do, to call back and let them know if anything else happens

Idk, just think it's A TEENY TINY BIT ODD

Cop in the news goes "words have consequences" as if people don't berate and threaten fast food and retail workers every day

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join the praxis discord - sign up - github

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

Like, I get the point about eugenics, but if your argument against physician assisted suicide is "doctors will use that to force people to commit suicide", I have to assume that you also believe that abortion should be illegal because people sometimes get pressured into it.

It's not possible to hold these positions and be a "leftist".

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

Not even half of Democrats voted against this.

Every rep from Maryland voted in favor.

Are we in the cold war rn?

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if the only reason u stopped being a nazi was to hear praise and not out of profound guilt for treating billions of people like subhuman animals u r still a nazi to me lol? it should be a selfless act u should spend ur entire life consistently unlearning the behavior and not expecting anything in return if i have to hug and kiss u for u not to be a nazi again u r the same exact nazi u always have been ….i dont need a treat to not hate other races or view human beings as animals why do you

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

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Eugenics is explicitly tied to the view of children as "things" that someone owns and controls, and until we do away with that idea, we can never be truly free of eugenics.

And that sucks, but there are a lot of people who claim to be anti eugenics who still very rigidly hold on to the idea of the nuclear family and the "right" to have a child, and that is not and never will be an anti-eugenics opinion, nor will it ever lead to any better conditions for disabled children.

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

liberal democracy is not going to save us from fascism because liberal democracy is nothing more than a relaxed form of fascism. the core social units of liberalism, the citizen and the nation-state, are also the core social units of fascism. this is why communists often talk about fascism emerging or evolving from liberal democracy, not replacing it.

in liberal democracy the public, reconceived as individuated "citizens," consent (or are assumed to consent) to governance in exchange for certain guaranteed "rights" or "freedoms." this social formation serves the ruling (capitalist/property-owning/employing) class by obscuring the inherent contradiction in capitalism between the interests of the laboring masses and their bosses. the masses and ruling class both become "citizens" who are understood as having the same "freedom" to own property, even if that "freedom" is practically unactionable for the majority of citizens.

because this is an obfuscation of class conflict, not an actual reorganization of the unequal relationship that gives rise to that conflict, the ruling class still faces the constant threat of popular resistance, and must constantly mitigate that threat. they're obliged to provide a sufficient standard of living to the masses to prevent them from rising up. the concept of the "citizen" is very useful to the ruling class, because it lets them limit the number of persons to whom they are beholden. citizenship is exclusive. the constitutions of liberal democracies don't really guarantee freedoms to people, they only afford those freedoms to citizens.

a liberal nation-state holds power over a certain swathe of land, and governs every person on that land, but only the people defined as "citizens" are entitled to "freedom." whatever standard of living the citizens enjoy is secured at the expense of an out-group, non-citizens (and sometimes second class "citizens"). the out-group makes material contributions (labor; cultural production; land/natural resources in a colonial context where the indigenous people are the out-group) without reaping any rewards, and they're subject to the violent authority of the state without receiving any of the bribes (rights/privileges) used to secure the consent of citizens.

the transition from liberalism to fascism is not a sweeping reordering of society, it's just a tightening and fortification of the existing borders between citizen and non-citizen. when capitalism is in crisis and the ruling class faces rebellion from starving masses, they can get bread for their citizen in-group by violently taking it from the out-group. and that's what they'll always inevitably do because the alternative would be to give up their own wealth and power.

when I see white people in Europe or its settler colonies say that their liberal democracies can't possibly be fascist because they're still enjoying certain rights and freedoms, what I see is the in-group denying the transition to fascism because they're not (or not yet) part of the out-group facing its violence. I hear this from white communists almost as often as white liberals, in statements like "this isn't fascism, it's just liberalism operating as intended," which is almost on the right track but ignores the crucial fact that fascism is liberalism's built-in fail-safe, and stops short of the crucial conclusion that the ruling class already pulled that trigger a long time ago. it seems to be very difficult for left-leaning whites to acknowledge that they are benefiting from fascism, and easier to close your eyes and accept those benefits. wake the fuck up now

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

Racist white guys at work demoted every person of color in a management position (of which there were 3), hired exclusively white people in their places, so up until a year or so ago, that entire work section had ONLY white managers.

When confronted about how fucked up that was, one of them got so mad he cried.

Racist white woman at work once authorized a day off for everyone because it was a really nice day.

I hate white women more than I hate white men, but working for white men is making me reconsider.

I've been thinking about who's worse to deal with during employment, the "nice" white guy or the "nice" white lady, when both are still covertly bigoted. And it's like... Both are insufferable, but I feel like with my experience that if you hehehaha up a nice racist white guy, swallow your pride while they think they're smarter than you, they usually go away so you can 🙄🙄🙄 in peace. I feel like the nice racist white lady will put you through psychological torture. But that also might be my tolerance waning.

What y'all think?

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

THIS HAPPENED AT WORK!!!

One of the parties in a grievance mediation had Otter.ai installed on his computer for a previous meeting. He thought (and, honestly, had been led to believe by the company) that he was the one triggering when it was used, and had wanted it to provide captions and a transcription for another meeting. He intended to use it once. Unbeknownst to him, it activated on EVERY MEETING. The worst part is no one noticed, so it is actually unclear how many meetings he'd been in that the AI had been activated on, but for this particular meeting, it sent the meeting host (my colleague) an email saying that it was RECORDING (which is illegal in this line of work, highly illegal, there's hearings in Congress right now on someone recording a negotiations meeting) the proceedings.

The goal of the email was for her to see how "helpful" of a tool that it was so that she could download it as well and enable it in her meetings. It sent her 1) an attendance summary (private); 2) a transcript of the meeting so far (illegal) and 3) a snippet of audio from the meeting (highly illegal). They had to stop the mediation entirely, switch to old school phones to see where the issue was and who had this enabled on their computer. The man was horribly embarrassed, and had to get help from his IT department to get the program uninstalled from his computer.

Genuinely, these AI tools are viruses. Because of this, we've been asking external people at the start of meetings if anyone else is present off-screen (a different story) or if anyone has AI programs installed on their computer. But most people don't KNOW because Copilot is now installed behind their backs, and it's being sneakier than other programs (like Microsoft isn't going to email someone and say "Hey, by the way, we've been listening into your meetings"), but that doesn't mean it isn't doing the same things.

If you are downloading and using these programs, please be aware of this and please fucking uninstall them.

At the California Institute of the Arts, it all started with a videoconference between the registrar’s office and a nonprofit.

One of the nonprofit’s representatives had enabled an AI note-taking tool from Read AI. At the end of the meeting, it emailed a summary to all attendees, said Allan Chen, the institute’s chief technology officer. They could have a copy of the notes, if they wanted — they just needed to create their own account.

Next thing Chen knew, Read AI’s bot had popped up inabout a dozen of his meetings over a one-week span. It was in one-on-one check-ins. Project meetings. “Everything.”

The spread “was very aggressive,” recalled Chen, who also serves as vice president for institute technology. And it “took us by surprise.”

The scenariounderscores a growing challenge for colleges: Tech adoption and experimentation among students, faculty, and staff — especially as it pertains to AI — are outpacing institutions’ governance of these technologies and may even violate their data-privacy and security policies.

That has been the case with note-taking tools from companies including Read AI, Otter.ai, and Fireflies.ai.They can integrate with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teamsto provide live transcriptions, meeting summaries, audio and video recordings, and other services.

Higher-ed interest in these products isn’t surprising.For those bogged down with virtual rendezvouses, a tool that can ingest long, winding conversations and spit outkey takeaways and action items is alluring. These services can also aid people with disabilities, including those who are deaf.

But the tools can quickly propagate unchecked across a university. They can auto-join any virtual meetings on a user’s calendar — even if that person is not in attendance. And that’s a concern, administrators say, if it means third-party productsthat an institution hasn’t reviewedmay be capturing and analyzing personal information, proprietary material, or confidential communications.

“What keeps me up at night is the ability for individual users to do things that are very powerful, but they don’t realize what they’re doing,” Chen said. “You may not realize you’re opening a can of worms.“

The Chronicle documented both individual and universitywide instances of this trend. At Tidewater Community College, in Virginia, Heather Brown, an instructional designer, unwittingly gave Otter.ai’s tool access to her calendar, and it joined a Faculty Senate meeting she didn’t end up attending. “One of our [associate vice presidents] reached out to inform me,” she wrote in a message. “I was mortified!”

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

I just feel like Black and brown men who only fuck white women shouldn't speak. To anyone. About anything. Ever.

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

"I'm sorry to be political"

Actually, that's the reason why fascism is in the rise. Why shouldn't you be political? Literally everything about your life is political. What you watch, what you buy, the air you breathe, the water you drink. What time do the shops around you close? How often do the busses run? When are doctors available and how are you supposed to get medical care? Are there any parks in a 3 mile radius? All of those things are politics.

Attempting to divorce yourself from "politics" is 1) not possible and 2) stupid. Every moment you apologize for considering your immediate surroundings and standards of living, every moment you ignore these things and swallow down expressions of discontent because other people might not like it, every moment you remain intentionally ignorant of the systems that govern you is a moment that you're letting bad things pass you by.

You need to be political, openly and unabashedly. Because your boss is. And so is your landlord. And so is the company you buy your food from.