#luddite era

[manichewitz]

we gotta bring back livejournal and wordpress and forums and weird little blogsites that aren't connected to any social media presence at all its just people online doing online things. the internet is so small now bc we're all squished into the same sites. we used to be so spread out. we used to be a proper decentralised digital culture

[she-is-ovarit]

By Sean Coughlan

BBC News

A diary written by a Yorkshire farmer more than 200 years ago is being hailed as providing remarkable evidence of tolerance towards homosexuality in Britain much earlier than previously imagined.

Historians from Oxford University have been taken aback to discover that Matthew Tomlinson's diary from 1810 contains such open-minded views about same-sex attraction being a "natural" human tendency.

The diary challenges preconceptions about what "ordinary people" thought about homosexuality - showing there was a debate about whether someone really should be discriminated against for their sexuality.

"In this exciting new discovery, we see a Yorkshire farmer arguing that homosexuality is innate and something that shouldn't be punished by death," says Oxford researcher Eamonn O'Keeffe.

The diaries were handwritten by Tomlinson in the farmhouse where he lived and worked

The historian had been examining Tomlinson's handwritten diaries, which have been stored in Wakefield Library since the 1950s.

The thousands of pages of the private journals have never been transcribed and previously used by researchers interested in Tomlinson's eye-witness accounts of elections in Yorkshire and the Luddites smashing up machinery.

But O'Keeffe came across what seemed, for the era of George III, to be a rather startling set of arguments about same-sex relationships.

Tomlinson had been prompted by what had been a big sex scandal of the day - in which a well-respected naval surgeon had been found to be engaging in homosexual acts.

Historian Eamonn O'Keeffe says the diaries provide a rare insight into the views of "ordinary people" in the early 1800s

A court martial had ordered him to be hanged - but Tomlinson seemed unconvinced by the decision, questioning whether what the papers called an "unnatural act" was really that unnatural.

Tomlinson argued, from a religious perspective, that punishing someone for how they were created was equivalent to saying that there was something wrong with the Creator.

"It must seem strange indeed that God Almighty should make a being with such a nature, or such a defect in nature; and at the same time make a decree that if that being whom he had formed, should at any time follow the dictates of that Nature, with which he was formed, he should be punished with death," he wrote on January 14 1810.

If there was an "inclination and propensity" for someone to be homosexual from an early age, he wrote, "it must then be considered as natural, otherwise as a defect in nature - and if natural, or a defect in nature; it seems cruel to punish that defect with death".

The diarist makes reference to being informed by others that homosexuality is apparent from an early age - suggesting that Tomlinson and his social circle had been talking about this case and discussing something that was not unknown to them.

Around this time, and also in West Yorkshire, a local landowner, Anne Lister, was writing a coded diary about her lesbian relationships - with her story told in the television series, Gentleman Jack.

But knowing what "ordinary people" really thought about such behaviour is always difficult - not least because the loudest surviving voices are usually the wealthy and powerful.

What has excited academics is the chance to eavesdrop on an everyday farmer thinking aloud in his diary.

Tomlinson was appalled by the levels of corruption during elections

"What's striking is that he's an ordinary guy, he's not a member of the bohemian circles or an intellectual," says O'Keeffe, a doctoral student in Oxford's history faculty.

An acceptance of homosexuality might have been expressed privately in aristocratic or philosophically radical circles - but this was being discussed by a rural worker.

"It shows opinions of people in the past were not as monolithic as we might think," says O'Keeffe, who is originally from Canada.

"Even though this was a time of persecution and intolerance towards same-sex relationships, here's an ordinary person who is swimming against the current and sees what he reads in the paper and questions those assumptions."

Claire Pickering, library manager in Wakefield, says she imagines the single-minded Tomlinson speaking the words with a Yorkshire accent.

There are three volumes of Tomlinson's diaries at Wakefield Library

He was a man with a "hungry mind", she says, someone who listened to a lot of people's opinions before forming his own conclusions.

The diary, presumably compiled after a hard day's work, was his way of being a writer and commentator when otherwise "that wasn't his station in life", she says.

O'Keeffe says it shows ideas were "percolating through British society much earlier and more widely than we'd expect" - with the diary working through the debates that Tomlinson might have been having with his neighbours.

But these were still far from modern liberal views - and O'Keeffe says they can be extremely "jarring" arguments.

If someone was homosexual by choice, rather than by nature, Tomlinson was ready to consider that they should still be punished - proposing castration as a more moderate option than the death penalty.

Tomlinson's former home was still there in the 1930s (bottom left), but has since disappeared beneath housing and a golf course

O'Keeffe says discovering evidence of these kinds of debate has both "enriched and complicated" what we know about public opinion in this pre-Victorian era.

The diary is raising international interest.

Prof Fara Dabhoiwala, from Princeton University in the US, an expert in the history of attitudes towards sexuality, describes it as "vivid proof" that "historical attitudes to same-sex behaviour could be more sympathetic than is usually presumed".

Instead of seeing homosexuality as a "horrible perversion", Prof Dabholwala says the record showed a farmer in 1810 could see it as a "natural, divinely ordained human quality".

Rictor Norton, an expert in gay history, said there had been earlier arguments defending homosexuality as natural - but these were more likely to be from philosophers than farmers.

"It is extraordinary to find an ordinary, casual observer in 1810 seriously considering the possibility that sexuality is innate and making arguments for decriminalisation," says Dr Norton.

Who was the writer of this diary?

Matthew Tomlinson was a widower, in his 40s when he wrote his journal in 1810 - a man of a "middling" class, not a poor labourer but not rich enough to own his own land.

"I try and imagine how he would have looked," says library manager Ms Pickering.

There are no pictures of Tomlinson, who is thought to have lived between about 1770 and 1850.

"Very dour," she suggests. And a "bit of a hypochondriac".

There are thousands of pages of handwritten journals - but some volumes appear to have been lost

"I imagine if you stopped him at his gate for a chat he'd talk about his gout more than anything else.

"I'd love to have a conversation with him about what Wakefield was like at the time," she says.

No-one knows how these private diaries, covering 1806 to 1839, ended up in Wakefield Library, but they were there by the 1950s and are presumed to be part of an earlier acquisition of old books and local documents.

There are three surviving volumes and at least another eight are missing.

But they show vivid detail about life in Wakefield in the early 19th Century.

Tomlinson, from his home at Doghouse Farm, recorded the life of nearby Wakefield

During elections, Tomlinson was appalled by the corruption, the rum drinkers having to be carried home in wheelbarrows and the "hired ruffians".

And at Queen Victoria's coronation he was sceptical about expensive ceremonies and celebrations, calling them all "humbug".

This was not a closed world. His social circle seemed to be avid readers of books and newspapers, following reports of revolutions abroad and riots and insurrections at home.

They saw elephants marching through Wakefield in a circus parade and military bands who had competed to hire the most talented black musicians.

We know where he lived - Doghouse Farm in Lupset, because he carefully wrote it on the front of his journals.

The farm, at the edge of the landowner's estate, is now under a housing estate and a golf course. All that survives are his diaries.

[savagewildnerness]

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, second movement, Adagio assai scores:

- Lestat’s letter

- DreamStat’s dissolve

- Loustat’s Reunion

Are there any more scenes it’s used in?

I love that, although I didn��t notice this on first watch, I must have felt it within myself before I was explicitly aware of the musical poignancy. 💓🥰🎶✨

Incidentally, I know I post music stuff here & obviously I play violin & a bit of rubbish piano. And I did do music GCSE & A-level. But I only ever had free violin lessons in school. I did not do a music degree. Nobody in my family plays an instrument. I never went to a single classical music concert as a child, nor did I ever hear any classical music played beyond what I played or found myself. So I’m just saying. I guess I always had music within me, but not much music around me (classical or popular. My Dad liked Frank Sinatra. My Mum doesn’t really like music. So there was very little music played ever in my home.)

Just to say/explain, I definitely don’t have an extensive knowledge of music. When friends know every popular song from childhood & all of the lyrics I am left bamboozled. I’ll recognise the tune of some, but I’m unlikely to know any words, or even the title. I don’t actually know much music. There’ll be specific pieces I know as they’ve been part of my life & knowledge. For example I studied a Mahler symphony & thus know a bit of Mahler; I adored Amadeus the film as a child so know some Mozart - that kind of thing. I might recognise some music is from one of a few composers as the era or style will be clear. But I don’t have a big knowledge of all music, unfortunately. Luddite me.

[cheesybadgers]

JSAMN 20 Readalong

What did poor Wales ever do to Susanna Clarke? 😂

Mr Honeyfoot told Mr Segundus that in his opinion they could not do better than emulate these great men, some of whom had gone to the most retired parts of England and Scotland and Ireland (where magic was the strongest)...

******************

Laurence Strange's estate was in Shropshire, in a retired part of the country near the Welsh border. Mrs Strange knew no one there. She was accustomed to city life, to Edinburgh balls and Edinburgh shops and the clever conversation of her Edinburgh friends; the sight of the high, gloomy hills forever shrouded in Welsh rain was very dispiriting.

******************

MERLIN was another but, as he was upon his mother's side Welsh and upon his father's Infernal, he will scarcely do for that pattern of respectable English Magic upon which PORTISHEAD, NORRELL and STRANGE have set their hearts.

******************

Once, for example, he received a visit from the overseer of a farm who insisted that, some years before, he had met Stephen at a cockfight near Richmond in the North Riding of Yorkshire and that Stephen had wagered him that the Prince of Wales would one day do something to bring disgrace upon the country. As this had now happened (the overseer cited the Prince's desertion of his wife as the shamefui deed)...

******************

"Ah, Stephen! As ever your noble instincts have led you to pick the choicest dish of all! Though the pork steaks are indeed quite plain, they have been fried in fat that was rendered down from the exorcised ghosts of black Welsh pigs that wander through the hills of Wales at night terrifying the inhabitants of that deplorable country!..."

******************

"...We are both a little slow tonight - it is this cold Welsh air - it chills the brain..."

******************

The Dyke is a great wall of earth and stones, now much decayed, which divides Wales from England - the work of Offa, an eigth-century Mercian king, who had learnt by experience to distrust his Welsh neighbours.

******************

She even learnt the language of a strange country which, Signor Tosetti had been told, some people believed still existed, although no one in the world could say where it was. (The name of this country was Wales.)

Of course, I know she is only reflecting the anti-Welsh sentiment of the era (especially amongst the English upper classes), it just made me laugh as a Yorkshirewoman married to a Welshman lol. It's also interesting to me that magic is apparently not as strong in Wales as the rest of the UK because there are a lot of similarities between the old mining towns in West/South Yorkshire and South Wales, plus the Luddites vs the Chartists (random fact: there is even a village in South Yorkshire called Wales). I know the Chartists came slightly later and the book uses Johannites as a stand-in for the Luddites, who are followers of the Raven King, so I wonder if once magic has been fully restored to England, Wales experiences its own form of revolution.

[pimento-playing-hopscotch]

Fic Anniversary post

(If I could make banners there would be such a neat banner here - but my technological ineptitude puts me a step above luddite lol)

A year ago (not today, March the 29th, but here we are) I started this fic because I wanted to write about TK's early life and I loved the idea of him not being an only child - specifically of him having a younger sister. Sophie is born when TK is five, and while this is divergent of canon because in the show he is an only child, I try to keep it as close to canon as I can given the details we've been given in the show about TK's life.

It's called Growing Up, Strand Style - it starts in 1999 when Sophie is born and TK is five years old.

it's up to 48 chapters now. It has a lot of run-on sentences and a lot of pop culture references that are era-appropriate.

Currently, TK is seventeen and Sophie is almost twelve. This is from the upcoming chapter -

 “They have champagne? This is a fancy place”. TK said as he took two off a passing tray.

“TK!” Carson hissed with alarm as TK tried handing him one. “My parents are gonna see!”

“Your dad’s already had like, four,” TK protested, downing his in one gulp. “See? No one noticed. Have you ever had it? It’s really good. It sort of tingles going down your throat”.

“Nuh uh”. Carson shook his head. “Your parents let your drink?”

“Definitely not”. TK laughed. “But my parents aren’t here”. Behind Carson, the ball drop was on the TV, and people were counting down. “I’ve got a way for you to taste it, though,” TK said, stepping closer to his boyfriend. “But only if you want to”. As the new year rang in, TK felt his boyfriend’s hand cup the back of his head as he leaned down to put his mouth on TK’s. Tk’s eyes fluttered closed as he leaned in to Carson’s kiss.

TK actually forgot that they were in a room full of people. He would’ve sworn that he and Carson were the only two people on Earth.

He had never felt a moment so perfect.

“You know, no one wants to see you two do that”. A jeering, and unfortunately, all too familiar voice cut through the noise.

Normally my take on my own writing is something akin to this (I'm sorry I truly never run out of references it's a problem) but I'm lowkey proud of this and can't believe it's been a year since I started writing it, and wanted to share it.

Read on Ao3

[asharkapologist]

baguettington the first pleasity please 🩷🩷🗼

Of course! Usual spoiler warning as always.

She doesn’t tie her hair back because doing so tends to give her a headache, so she prefers to just let her hair fall around her, even if she has to often push it out of her face.

She and Greta definitely dated, and sometimes in quiet, peaceful moments in the evening after they were both done working, Celine would let Greta play with and style her hair, even if it was just for the evening.

She deeply dislikes authority and large corporations. She’s had some business owners approach her to try to buy her intellectual property/inventions, and gave them an impressive verbal thrashing.

Celine low-key suspected Leopold of being the saboteur, just because of how crucial he was to running the World Exhibition and how he had access to all of the inventions, she thought he was perhaps a little too nice, and there’d just been a massive scandal with one of his family members.

She was so annoyed with the police being useless and failing to stop someone going around sabotaging inventions and not doing anything about the Luddites harassing her and other inventors that she genuinely considered breaking into the police station and laying those human traps everywhere.

When Stanley was falling to his death, her ghost materialized in front of his eyes and called him an idiot. (This one is mostly a joke but according to s7, ghosts are canon and do exist, so who knows?)

She taught Greta several swear words in French.

She initially became interested in chess because when she was little, some boy at school made a sexist comment about women and girls not being able to play chess. In order to shut him and his friends up, she became incredibly skilled at chess and thrashed them all in a competition.

She took apart and put back together a LOT of things in her home as a child, curious to see how they worked.

If she existed in the era of social media, she’d be incredibly popular online for her blunt and snarky comments/content. 

She considered attending university, but decided that the best experience with engineering and inventing was hands-on experience, and that university wouldn’t teach her anything she couldn’t learn by herself. 

[docgold13]

Batman: The Animated Series - Paper Cut-Out Portraits and Profiles

Ra's al Ghul

Born sometime in the 14th century, the man who would go on to become known as Ra's al Ghul discovered an ancient, naturally occurring substance that he called 'Lazarus.' This substance existed in subterranean pools and bathing in it had the capacity to rejuvenate the body, extending life and healing injuries.  Use of these Lazarus Pits enabled Ra’s to live for hundreds of years.

Living for so long, Ra’s grew to become a master planner, a shrewd tactician and incredible combatant.  He additionally accrued a massive fortune.  He saw himself as a steward of the planet, destined to guide mankind away from ecological destruction.  A luddite of the highest order, Ra’s believed that technology would bring about the planet’s demise and needed to be stymied in all its forms.  

To this end, Ra’s formed a secretive organization known as The Society of Shadows.  He took on the name ‘Ra’s al Ghul’ which roughly translates to ‘the demon’s head’ and his followers obeyed his every command as though it was a decree from a godly force.  

In the modern era, Ra’s saw a number of his operations hindered by The Batman.  Having faced so many unworthy foes, it was actually refreshing to Ra’s to encounter an opponent who offered a true challenge.  Above all of Batman’s attributes, Ra’s was most impressed by his skills of deduction and he took to referring to Batman merely as ‘The Detective.’  This admiration aside, Ra’s underestimated Batman and the Dark Knight succeed in thwarting many of Ra’s schemes.  

After several hundred years, the rejuvenating powers of the Lazarus Pit was becoming less effective.  Comprehending his eventual demise, Ra’s attempted to cajole Batman into taking over his mission as the new leader of Society of Shadows, as well as husband to his beautiful daughter Talia.  Batman rejected this offer and hence Ra’s felt compelled to find new means of extending his life so to continue his mission.

The brilliant actor David Warner provided the voice for Ra’s al Ghul, with the villain first appearing in the forty-fourth episode of the first season of Batman: The Animated Series, ‘Off Balance.’

[divinekangaroo]

One thing I adore about PB is Tommy's approach towards modernity. Straddling the non-industrial past and the industrial/modern present; constantly positioning himself on the cutting edge, if not quite bleeding edge, of period/era technology. Cars, manufacturing, shipping, phones, typewriters. Medicine, psychology, and even bringing in incredibly modern concepts into politics in that era. He is constantly grabbing at the future. It's this striking characteristic in him, all the way from S1 when they install the phone in the Garrison - ~if only we knew someone else with a phone, we could call them~ - through to S6's final episode when he even wangles a seat on an airplane to get to Canada without wasting time. So uncommon at the time, but he just went: I need to get there with least time lost, and matched requirement to a borderline experimental non-consumer-available insider technology to do so.

(Sidestep: Such an interesting juxtaposition of all that, with the constant representation of the pre-industrial-era Romani threads in S6, too: Esme, the hills, the horse, the curse, the mythology, the vardo, all that slamming up against an actual cutting edge submachinegun, so ‘contemporary’ it’s actually anachronistic by a few years (if my research was right, it’s a WWII weapon that submachinegun, not to get on the symbolism, but). Arguably, Ruby in hospital having the most contemporary medical treatment available while Tommy goes walkabout to lift a curse is another notable juxtaposition.

There’s also an interesting slant of his modernity balanced against what I call his hoarding habit — the most cutting edge piece of tech or modernity in 1923 he’s still hanging onto in 1933. But yeah, even with that the juxtapositions are interesting because they can only happen if the forward reaching/modernity focus is there)

So, when I see contemporary-modern!AU takes of Tommy that are like, representing him as a relatively humdrum part of the capitalist consumer status quo, or even as a luddite who can't and won't use an Iphone, I scratch my head. I do think he’s *not* much of an innovator, but he is absolutely a considered first-gen adopter and recognises (and takes) opportunity regarding tech innovation with little concern for risk.

I have contemplated would rich modern!AU Tommy with disposable income finance startups if they pitched well: probably yes, because he takes gambles; with a personally vested interest in the innovators in the same way he had that vested interest in Bonnie. Startups as horses or boxers on a diff playing field, win some, lose some, etc.

[girderednerve]

obviously the russell brand (also john tavares? lmao?) 'protection' amulet is a huge horrible scam, but i do sort of wonder about the EMF exposure stuff. most of it is absolutely crackpot nonsense, but the general understanding that sensitivity to e.g. 5G is a horseshit conservative thing does kind of prevent us from investigating further, i think? and while i have no particular belief that cellphone radiation is deadly or whatever the story is, i do think that blasting increasingly high-frequency radiation in populated areas is deserving of robust safety investigation. when you say stuff like this, the studies cited in response are mostly from, like, the LTE era, and we are using different hardware, way more people are using cellular data constantly, and 5G towers need to be placed more densely to work well (there's something of a speed/range trade-off). meanwhile, network providers & cell phone manufacturers are planning already for 6G, with an expected rollout in 2030. i swear to god i am not trying to be a luddite here OR agree with a regular patron at a previous library where i worked, who insisted that other people having cell phones in the library caused her physical pain & would shout at staff & other library users about it. but i don't have a great deal of trust in american regulators (consider, for example, that the 5G frequency ranges that the FCC licensed out included frequencies that interfere with some altimeters and weather satellites), and i have no trust whatsoever in the large companies who are driving this change. i mean, i also have questions about whether any of these improvements are warranted, but then i am still cheerfully using my 4G potato phone with no complaints

[manichewitz]

in a moment of weakness i redownloaded tiktok and discovered it was even stupider than it was when i left. i was worried i’d get re-addicted to it but honestly the whole app is so annoying that it completely bypassed my addictive personality and i deleted it in less than an hour

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Enshitternet

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

This week on my podcast, I read "Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet," my recent Medium column about building a better internet:

https://doctorow.medium.com/enshitternet-c1d4252e5c6b

As John @hodgman is fond of reminding us, "nostalgia is a toxic impulse." It is easy for an old net.hand like me to fall into the trap of shaking his fist at the cloud. Having been on the other side of that dynamic, I can tell you it's no fun.

When I got on BBSes in the early 1980s, there was an omnipresent chorus of grumps insisting that the move from honest acoustic couplers to decadent modems was the end of the Golden Age of telecommunications:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler

When I got on Usenet shortly thereafter, the Unix Greybeard set never passed up an opportunity to tell us newcomers that the Fidonet-Usenet bridge allowed the barbarian hordes to overwhelm their Athenian marketplace of ideas:

https://technicshistory.com/2020/06/25/the-era-of-fragmentation-part-4-the-anarchists/

When I joined The WELL in the late 1980s, I was repeatedly assured that the good times were over, and that we would never see their like again:

https://www.well.com/

Now that I'm 52, I've learned to recognize this dynamic, from the Eternal September:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

to the moral panic over menuing systems replacing CLIs:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-gatekeepers-fortresses

to the culture wars over what would happen when the net got a normie-friendly GUI:

https://www.dejavu.org/1993win.htm

And yeah, I've done it too, explaining "Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)":

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

But there's a key difference between my own warnings about the enshittification that new "user friendly" technologies would engender and all those other AARP members' complaints: they were wrong, and I was right.

As Tom Eastman reminded us, the internet really was better, back before it became "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text of the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

The underlying pathology of that enshittification wasn't the UI, or whether it involved an app store. As the Luddites knew, the important thing about a technology isn't what it does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

The problem wasn't which technology we used. There is nothing inherent about touchscreens that makes them into prisons that trap users, rather than walled gardens that protect them.

Likewise, the problem wasn't who made that technology. We didn't swap wise UUCP Monks for venal tech bros. The early tech world was full of public-spirited sysops, but it was also full of would-be monopolists who tried – and failed – to get us to "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

If it wasn't the technology that killed the old, good internet, and if it wasn't the people who killed the old, good internet, where did the enshitternet come from?

It wasn't the wrong tech, it wasn't the wrong people: it was the wrong rules. After all, the Apple ][+ went on sale the year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail. Consumer tech was the first industry born after antitrust was dismantled, and it created the modern monopoly playbook: buying and merging with competitors. The resulting unity of purpose and anticompetitive profit margins allowed tech to capture its regulators and secure favorable court and legislative outcomes.

The simultaneous drawdown of antitrust enforcement and growth of tech meant that tech's long-standing cycle of renewal was ended. Tech companies that owed their existence to their ability to reverse-engineer incumbent companies' products and make interoperable replacements and add-ons were able to ban anyone else from doing unto them as they did unto the giants that came before them:

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

The pirates became admirals, and set about creating a "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/painful-burning-dribble/#law-of-intended-consequences

They changed the rules to ensure that they could "disrupt" anyone they chose, but could themselves mobilize the full might of the US government to prevent anyone from disrupting them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

The old, good internet was the internet we we able to make while tech was still realizing the new anticompetitive powers it had at its disposal, and it disappeared because every administration, R and D, from Reagan to Trump, yanked more and more Jenga blocks out of the antitrust tower.

In other words: the old, good internet was always doomed, because it was being frantically built in an ever-contracting zone of freedom to tinker, where technologies could be operated by and for the people who used them.

Today, the Biden administration has ushered in a new era of antitrust renewal, planting the seeds of a disenshittification movement that will tame corporate power rather than nurturing it:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

In other words, we are living in the first days of a better nation.

In other words, rather than restoring the old, good internet, we should build a new, good internet.

What is a new, good internet? It's an internet where it's legal to:

reverse-engineer the products and services you use, to add interoperability to them so you can leave a social network without leaving your friends:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

jailbreak devices to remove antifeatures, like surveillance, ink-locking, or repair-blocking:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/17/have-you-tried-not-spying/#coppa

move your media files and apps from any platform to any device or service, even if the company that sold them to you objects:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

A new, good internet gives powers to users, and takes power away from corporations:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

On a new, good internet, companies can't practice algorithmic wage discrimination:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

They can't turn search into an auction between companies that match your query and companies that want to sell you fakes and knockoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

They can't charge rent to the people whose feeds you asked to read for the privilege of reaching you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

In fact, a new, good internet is one where we euthanize rentiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

On the new good internet, your boss can't use bossware to turn "work from home" into "live at work":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

And on top of that, you have the right to hack that bossware to undetectably disable it (and hackers have the right to sell or give you that hack):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

On the new, good internet, we stop pretending that tech is stealing content from news companies, and focus on how tech steals money from the news, with app taxes, rigged ad markets, surveillance ads, and payola:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The new, good internet is an internet where we seize the means of computation. It's an internet operated by and for the people who use it.

Hodgman is right. Nostalgia is a toxic impulse. The point of making a new, good internet isn't to revive the old, good internet. There were plenty of problems with the old, good internet. The point is to make a new, good internet that is the worthy successor to the old, good internet – and to consign the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, an unfortunate transitional stage between one good internet and another.

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/21/enshitternet-the-old-good-internet-deserves-a-new-good-internet/

and here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448_-_Enshitternet.mp3

and here's a link to my podcast's RSS feed:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/22/the-new-good-internet/#the-old-good-internet

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[sepublic]

So what they did with Acronix and Krux, with the younger one being into the modern era, while the boomer twin is a luddite, makes sense. But I wonder if they could've done things the other way around?

For Acronix, his trip through time was but a brief moment; Maybe a few minutes, max! And then all of a sudden everything has changed, including everyone. Many of them are gone, even. Wu is an old man, but so is his brother, and it's like watching your twin just age rapidly in front of your eyes. That can't REALLY be Krux, but seeing him like this confirms it.

The world is alien, and Acronix still hasn't quite adjusted to the fact that it changed; It happened too brief and instantly. Sometimes he wakes up, or subconsciously operates on the assumption that everything is still the same as it was; Krux mentions getting a ride and Acronix expects a carriage, only to be met with a car and all of its foreign smells and sounds and textures.

So of course he wants to go back to the past; He's in denial, he hasn't adjusted, he can't accept that he missed out on so much. It's driving Acronix insane.

Conversely, you have Krux: Who got there the long way. The regular, natural way; Seeing each little change happen one at a time, gradually, at a pace he could easily acclimate to, just like everyone else. And as he adjusted and got used to this, got used to being alone, he grew to at least appreciate the little things that changed and improved, if only to distract himself from the absence of his twin brother.

He remembers what it was like back then, so Krux can actually appreciate how things have improved nowadays, compared to some younger folk who glamorize the past as perfect despite never actually living in it. But then Acronix finally returns and he looks the exact same, and in a way it's a twisted relief because Krux doesn't have to adjust to what he missed out on, Acronix is exactly as he left him, they can pick up where they left off like nothing happened, right?

But his twin... Basically a little brother at this point, he's changed. He's in a crisis because Krux has changed, changed too much that their dynamic is now different. Krux's heart is breaking to see Acronix suffer like this, so he decides, why not? Why not undo all of the decades of progress, all of the present, just to restore the past, just so Acronix can be happy again? So we can grow old together, the normal way, and experience these changes together as we should have?

You can also adjust which Time powers they have, accordingly; For Acronix, he has Forward and Reversal, because he's gone back and forth, he's time-travelled, speeding through time in different directions. For Krux, he has Slow-Mo and Pause, because he got to the future the long way. He took his time, he was able to digest each bit normally, he was patient about it. He's now the older mentor who advises patience to his younger apprentice... Except not exactly, because they're still twins, and also Krux isn't going to make his brother accept what happened, but instead coddle him by breaking reality for Acronix.

Krux looks older and is more mature in a lot of ways, while Acronix is like a stunted child by comparison, because he basically is as someone who didn’t get the chance and time to actually grow up, and is expected to grow up fast but refuses to. Maybe throw in a dynamic with Lloyd, who also had to grow up fast and missed out on a lot, but then actually adjusted to and accepted that. He was the one who chose to grow up literally. And Kai and Nya could parallel the Hands of Time in handling grief in a sense, holding onto some hope that things may come back, but also having to accept change. The fact that Krux is the reason they lost their parents for a while just ties it all together more.

[justlikedylansmrjones]

Guys I posted the first three chapters (13k words) of my regency era McLennon fic where John is a Luddite and Paul is the son of a textile mill owner. I was very dedicated to writing it in June but haven't written anything of substance since the beginning of July and so yeah please leave your thoughts in the comments to motivate me😭

Also if you have any ideas for small scenes that you would want to see then feel free to DM me and if they fit the vague outline of events i have, then I might write it:)

[warcrimesimulator]

All of these eu flag globe emoji ice cream emoji libshits on Twitter calling artists "luddites" for being concerned about losing their jobs to ai, "just get a new job" "adapt to the market"

Die one thousand deaths. I hate liberals I hate liberals!!!! And you can't even compare this to horse-drawn carriage drivers or elevator operators like holy shit, no little kid in the early 20th century had dreams of being a fucking elevator operator. Art is a skill and a passion, people do have dreams of being an artist and have developed that skill over years in hope of getting somewhere.

The more jobs we lose to "progress" the less jobs there will actually be for the average person. There's going to be tech people and engineers and doctors, and then there's going to be an underclass of everyone else who wasn't privileged or educated or abled enough to become a professional in the technological era and have to become Amazon warehouse workers or some shit. Even most minimum wage work is slowly getting replaced and if you think this is helping retail and fast food workers climb the ladder you're dense as fuck.

[arcadekitten]

Here's a question that just popped into my head;

Why is your avatar/sona a robot catgirl? With how all your works seem to be renaissance or cottage core adjacent (more just "in style" then literally in the era/time period), one would assume your sona would be something more fantastical too, like, an actual cat girl or something. Instead, you're a high Sci-fi android that leans hard into the robot aesthetic.

Was this intentional? An accident? Something in-between? A long-con to reveal that Cemetery Mary actually takes place in a Luddite society in the year 2552?

I've been dying to know for the past eight minutes after I thought about this question in passing.

Because it's fun, and I like it!! ��

I've always loved robots and catgirls and arcade aesthetics and now I can be all of that in one!

I'd like to make some more sci-fi/futuristic games in the future and stuff too--even if I'm just incorporating elements of them--it's just that all the ideas I have right now fit better into a more whimsical or even modern setting! But I'd love to experiment with more cyber stuff in the future too cause I also really really love that stuff(especially aesthetically)!

[sailforvalinor]

Okay, I know I said I’m not planning on doing this modern Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom AU, and I’m still not, but I have had a bunch of ideas floating around in my brain. Maybe I’ll write a few snippets or something? Anyway, just to get them out of my brain:

In our modern AU, Rose and Alec won't be related to the Campbells--Alec is such a close friend of the Campbell family (particularly Uncle Mac and Aunt Jane) that the title of "uncle" is honorary. (Gonna have to give them a different last name then...hmmmm...)

They all live on the same street/in the same neighborhood to allow for lots of childhood hijinks.

In replacement of their “circus,” the boys drive around a 20-year-old 15-passenger van that used to belong to their church. It is old, but it’s well kept-up—the Campbells, however affluent they may be, don’t believe in letting things go to waste. Also, the thought of Archie driving six boys around in a dilapidated van like a tired soccer mom amuses me.

Perhaps Phebe is being fostered by the family next door? (She ends up adopted by Uncle Alec eventually, of course.)

The Rose in Bloom era will begin as Rose is starting college

Rose just came back from a gap-year program—she could’ve started the same year as Mac, but Uncle Alec wanted to keep her another year. (Phebe went with her, probably?)

The immediate gut instinct is to make Charlie the popular jock, but it’s actually more textually supported to make him the popular, slightly-unhinged theatre kid who always gets all the main roles. His major is, of course, undecided. (Maybe he’s also a year behind?)

Mac is biology pre-med, but he probably just switched from philosophy or physics or something. (Probably tacks on an English or Writing minor somewhere along the way.)

Unsure about Rose—business or social work?

Archie graduated a year early and went straight into the workforce (doing what though, I’m not sure)

Phebe is studying music, but refuses to let Uncle Alec pay for any of it, and is trying to earn her way through by working multiple jobs at the same time.

Steve would also be starting this year, but honestly I don't know what to do with him. However much he may desire to emulate Charlie, Aunt Jane would be sure to force him to pick a major...perhaps communication?

Since they live so close to the university, they all live at home (Phebe couldn't talk Uncle Alec out of that one), with the exception of Charlie--he managed to convince Aunt Clara to let him live on-campus. As I'm sure you can imagine, this only serves to worsen all the trouble he gets up to.

Speaking of the trouble Charlie gets up to, instead of the Major Incident involving him coming home drunk after New Year's, perhaps it involves him getting caught with alcohol on their (dry) campus.

I honestly don't know if I'm going to have him die in this one. I probably should, because it kind of interrupts the integrity of the story if he doesn't die...but part of me wants him to see Rose and Mac together so he can see what a respectful man looks like, lol. But he will probably still end up dying in a car crash, unfortunately.

Actually, perhaps Rose’s three month “experiment” is that she wants to try living on-campus for a bit, which Uncle Alec is hesitant about, and then she decides to move back home the semester after Charlie’s whole incident. I’m mostly doing this because I want Rose and Kitty Van to be roommates, because that would be outrageously funny

Mac carries a flip-phone, which drives Steve insane, and has threatened to go Luddite on more than one occasion--but never actually would, as he's way too into the modern conveniences of downloadable music for that. Carries a little ipod nano around. He does have a laptop for school, though. Knows a lot about recent technological advances and will regale anyone with his knowledge at the slightest provocation, but will also lecture about how detrimental social media is in the same breath. He doesn't even have a Facebook. ("Even Aunt Plen has a Facebook," Steve moans. "Right, didn't you say that Facebook was for, and I quote, 'old people'?" "Well yeah, but at least it would prove you EXIST." "Have you ever heard of this guy named Descartes?")

I also feel like Mac's the type to own a record player and collect vintage vinyls (although he isn't aware that this is currently a popular thing to do).

All of the boys (with the exception of Charlie, because Aunt Clara let him get out of it) have campus jobs. Mac, of course, works in the library, but I'm not sure about Steve.

I’m not really sure what to do about translating the issue with Charlie taking Rose to parties, as the college parties of today certainly do NOT translate to the sorts of social gatherings in the time period of the original book. The time where she asks Mac to go to a party with her could be an actual campus formal event of some kind, but beyond that, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s a group of friends that Rose feels uncomfortable being around, but doesn’t want to cut off entirely?

The same goes for Archie and Phebe, as class dynamics in marriages are not as a big of a deal as they were back then, or at least, it won’t translate to the same earth-shattering event that it is in the original book. Unsure what direction to take them, honestly, but their love story is so wonderful, I’d want to do it as much justice as I can. (In theory. As I said, I’m not actively planning on writing this.)