read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

"This is not the same thing as persuading people that the thing itself matters: they usually know it does. The task is to persuade people that they matter: they know they usually don’t."

haven't seen it said better than @alybatt.bsky.social says it here

Today, one faction of reactionaries denounce leftists as enemies of science, while another faction of reactionaries happily embrace that same role, attacking science as totalitarian. Words like “postmodernism” and “relativism” get thrown about with fervor but little clarity, echoes of a conflict from decades ago. Is there actually a physical world and can we know anything about it? Did academics on the left influence “post-truth” politics on the right? How could supposed defenders of “science” get lost in a mire of transphobia?

Hey, I wrote a book.

Did The Science Wars Take Place?

Covers the history and philosophy of a fight in the 80s & 90s between some postmodernists and scientists, with an eye to anarchist interests and lasting political influences among the far-right.

Pre-order here: store.c4ss.org/index.php/pr...

Because conservative freakouts since 2017 have completely warped the media landscape, I want to compile a thread of some contemporary instances of fascist violence against antifascists that were hugely influential on everyone I know 🧵

Fit for Purpose? How Today’s Commercial Digital Platforms Subvert Key Goals of Public Education Digital educational platforms have become ubiquitous in American classrooms, with tools like Google Workspace for Education, Kahoot!, Zearn, Khan Academy, and many others now structuring curriculum, i...

Say it often, say it loud:

"Overall, research has not supported the common-sense presumption that digital approaches to schooling are better than non-digital alternatives. At the broadest level, widespread computer use in education has been found to be associated with lower student achievement."

a detail that appears with fairly regular occurrence in many personal accounts of the Nazi regime is how many individuals died from stroke, heart attacks, and similar health complications because of the stress and despondency that was inflicted on those whose lives were ruined by the regime.

Have you ever read any books by anti-capitalist people of color?

You support establishment Democrats, so by definition you are a liberal not a leftist. Liberals are ok with capitalism, leftists are anti-capitalist.

You can be black and still support white supremacy, which you do by supporting establishment Democrats.

Pity the sad legacy of Barack Obama | Cornel West Our hope and change candidate fell short time and time again. Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility

I’m writing for the other people who read this, not you since you’re gonna ignore me. If you’re not a bot you’re a liberal (you are not a leftist) who doesn’t know that there are people left of you. Here’s an article about Obama by Cornel West

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

You’ve provided no argument for my racism. I have provided plenty of arguments for your racism.

I must be talking to a bot

Why should we trust you? Clinton's big problem with young black Americans In the 1990s, Democrats helped shift the national conversation away from systemic racism. If the country’s first black president could not disrupt the racial status quo, what can we expect Hillary Cli...

Please listen to black women like Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Here she critiques the Democratic Party establishment including Hilary Clinton. Did you know the Dems and Clinton are right wing???

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...

How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth The nation's first African-American president was a disaster for black wealth.

You keep using red herrings to avoid Cornel West’s arguments and to avoid my original point that equity will not exist if bosses exist. Oh and here’s another leftist critique of Obama:
jacobin.com/2017/12/obam...

Read Cornel

Nobody seriously involved with anti-racist actions should share what they do on a public forum. That would be an incredibly stupid thing to do now with fascists in control. You should know this. But since you don’t, I doubt you do anything worthwhile.

Did you even read Cornel West??

Please tell me anti-racist things Obama did.

He’s half black. You know damn well that light skinned black and brown people are hella racist towards dark skinned black and brown people.

And I will never be an ally to someone who is ok with bosses existing. Take screen shots of this and share it widely, please!

Africa to Obama: Mind your own business Like all imperial powers before it, the US seeks to dominate the world in order to exploit it.

There’s countless leftist and anti-racist critiques of Obama. Like this one

www.aljazeera.com/opinions/201...

Cornel West thinks otherwise. Obama was a black face to a white supremacy

What US president and administration hasn’t been racist??? How could one have an equitable system where bosses exist???

As long as bosses exist equity will not exist, so corporations parading DEI is propaganda.

Not to tell you what to do, but “truly living” is subjective. What may be truly living for you may not be truly living for someone else. Especially if that someone else is allergic to red meat and gluten. I truly live by not eating junk.

Yeah but *why* could people organize more effectively in LA?

Some thoughts:

It’s easier to organize under Democrats than Republicans, cited by Chomsky in 2020

LA has better public transit and walk-ability compared to Texas and Florida, that makes moving to organize easier

New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable A recent study published in the journal PNAS is overturning traditional wisdom regarding the origins and inevitability of wealth inequality

A massive study of 50,000 households over 1,000 archaeological sites provides ample evidence that inequality is not a "natural" outgrowth of sophistication. Instead, it is a political choice. Which means, kids, that we don't have to choose it.
archaeologymag.com/2025/04/stud...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Time for another digital security PSA with guitar … here’s “All the Small Things” but it’s about scrubbing metadata from your photos before you post them 🤘

The boiling started decades ago

"Our feelings of helplessness stem from the fact that for 30y ears the tools of persuasion and coercion have been mobilized to wage an ideological war for capitalism, rather than to create conditions for capitalism to remain viable. . Neoliberalism places political and ideological considerations above economic ones. The result has been a campaign of fantasy manipulation, a campaign so effective that people with dead-end jobs now believe that there is no alternative It is quite clear that this ideological hegemony has now reached its limit. Does this mean that the system is on the point of collapse? It’s hard to say. But capitalism is not old. It hasn’t been around forever, and it seems just as reasonable to imagine it can be transformed into something completely different as to imagine it will necessarily continue existing until the sun blows up, or until it annihilates us through some ecological catastrophe. . - David Graeber

Some thoughts on Capitalism, from the book;
THE ULTIMATE
HIDDEN TRUTH
OF THE WORLD (page 104)

The placement of "trans issues" here is, without exaggeration, one of the most depraved things I've ever seen in the pages of this publication.