Sometimes I really wonder if even Mark Fisher could have predicted the level of capitalist realism required for believing "you know what, if capital says I only exist to passively consume and be consumed then that must be right" and then viciously defend that stance.

Like in general, it is surprisingly very hard to convince people to preserve what makes life worth living and that life is substantially better with education, science, music, love, and things that bring people joy and even after decades of disillusionment, it still shocks me.

This is part of the problem with higher education being re-defined as job focused rather than human understanding and creativity focused. Liberal education made us better in every way. Narrow curriculum focused exclusively on a diploma and job means schools just pump out widgets.

The defensiveness around using AI in art both a) shows how much the defunding of the arts and humanities has reshaped culture and values and b) is just so depressing I don't even know what to say because how can you convince people to find value in living? In life beyond making money?

Scientists Studied The Infamous "Chicago Rat Hole" And They Have Some Bad News The "Chicago rat hole" became so famous it is now housed in the City Hall-County Building. Scientists studying it found a few surprises, and some grim news.

Just glad Splatatouille's family can finally have some closure x

One or two exchanges of disagreement, sure. Once it turns into an essay? Not letting it go? Not worth the time. Work out your denial on your own.

I sometimes still get amazed at how people will hound minorities on social media to agree with them that everything is fine or not that bad. It's very odd validation seeking. No one owes you that kind of energy and sorry but it's an instant block in my book. It's not our job to soothe your emotions.

There's something to be said about how personally people take it when you don't share an app addiction.

The fact that Spotify is a scum company taking ICE ad money is the most important part, but I can't help but be a little selfishly gleeful at the unsubs because I genuinely hate that damn app and hope people stop trying to get me to use it.

I want to support and help people, but the barriers are very real and stark. It is a stroke of luck that my estranged parents filed paperwork for me as a baby and that I had documentation of my citizenship as an adult. And lucky that immigrating my partner took place during the Trudeau years.

One of the worst things about these times is seeing every single day desperate and scared trans people wanting to know how to escape to Canada and yet knowing as a trans person that moved in 2017 how difficult it is. Telling friends and strangers alike the reality of it is crushing.

I strongly disagree, if only by the legislation on the table. But we're not likely going to find agreement if you're coming from a position that this is a terribly different landscape.

This is something that is horribly absent from even my local politics. It really drives home how much electoral politics has been driven by fear and shame. I can't remember taking part in an election where a candidate went "I really love my home and want people living here to have what they need."

Fuck, man. This is water in a desert.

Thank you, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social. I’m rooting for you.

I would have thought that in the states that January 6th would have shaken the Dems into realizing this, but it shockingly didn't. So I have little hope that Canadian and UK liberals will either.

With Canadian governments and services "implementing AI tools" from US-based corporations there is shockingly little conversation about where that sensitive government and healthcare data goes. #cdnpoli

This is how I find out that they replaced them?! We deserved ridiculous Santa robes, c'mon!

Bob Ross paintings will be auctioned in support of U.S. public TV stations | CBC News Thirty paintings by Ross, whose TV show The Joy of Painting aired on public TV stations in the 1980s and 90s, will be auctioned off with proceeds going to stations that use content from distributor Am...

Something about this softly breaks my heart.

Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance - Nature A revised ‘Doughnut’ providing a visual assessment of trends in social deprivation and planetary degradation over the past two decades shows more than doubling of global GDP accompanied by accelerating ecological overshoot but only a modest reduction in human deprivation.

Here's the paper, open access: nature.com/articles/s41...

And here is an interactive website with time-series data from 2000 to 2022: doughnuteconomics.org/doughnut

Is the AI Bubble About to Burst? In the years since Automation and the Future of Work first appeared, a new wave of technological enthusiasm has swept across the popular imagination. The catalyst this time has been the rapid advances...

Still holds up. "The present frenzy surrounding artificial intelligence will not last forever. [...] We can resign ourselves to another cycle of technological disillusionment, or we can ask more fundamental questions about how technology might genuinely serve human needs."

Revisiting the Spiritual Violence of BS Jobs Anthropologist David Graeber’s theory of BS jobs provides a critical window into why modern work is so often so soul-sucking.

I remember first reading the essay in Strike! and feeling like finally someone was speaking to lived experience. I feel there is so much to build on Graeber's work in our current AI bubble world. That and the phenomenon of people in Meaningful Jobs being forced to take Bullshit jobs to survive.

American Men Are Angry. It Was Always Going to Come to This. America instills violence in men from a young age.

This is one of the most provocative feminist essays I've read in a long time and what a breath of fresh air it is to tie in social class, nonbinary gender experience, the production of violence, and men's liberation into the conversation. #jacobtobia

Same. Goddamn. There are too many examples to count every day.

Sometimes the Weight of the Shit piles up and it's a good thing to let it out. Stranger to stranger, I genuinely hope you're doing ok (as much as one can be).

For one thing, there's the constant technofash messaging. Masculinity is coding, investing, crypto, sports betting, and fitness (intense anorexia/body issues) according to men's internet. Bet all of your money, loser. There's no joy. There isn't even sex. You aren't ripped enough for sex. Optimize.

Thinking about this again, but I do think it's underappreciated that White Men's Internet is a very different experience from Other Internets. When I started fresh and algorithms flipped to "man," it was akin to logging on in a different country. And I have to say: It's a very weird vibe.

The "left" remains a bogeyman in the social media rotted brain, rather than people with real concerns about bigoted comedy. Can't be that people working in entertainment publicly stated that Chapelle and Louis CK are scumbags long ago, or that extreme wealth overrides public opinion.

On the Riyadh comedy festival: The "oh the 'left' was lying/exaggerating before about them but this time they actually did something bad!" reactions are a fascinating weird little microcosm of how resistant people are to catching up to reality.

Being of an age that was among the first users of social media is surreal sometimes (had a roommate that was among the first on Facebook after it expanded to other campuses). Went from college students talking to each other to never using social media to talk to offline friends.

When you grow up and understand that you have no one to admire left (whether it's shameful family history, awful public figures, or just terrible people around you), you realize that you have to try to be admirable.