Christopher Silver

I can handpaint a few more of these Palestine action poem-anagrams, if you want one it's a £10 donation to Medical Aid for Palestine. PM me your address.

Sex is getting scrubbed from the internet, but a billionaire can sell you AI nudes Grok’s nonconsensual deepfakes show how hollow the online safety push can be.

"In the new ... internet, girls can’t learn about periods on Reddit and artists can’t sell smutty games on Itch.io, but a military contractor will make you nonconsensual deepfakes of Taylor Swift taking her top off for $30 a month." — @thedextriarchy.bsky.social www.theverge.com/internet-cen...

Quakers arrested for holding signs in peaceful protest, as the figure of Mahatma Gandhi looks on. Symbolic.

These kids are today’s Brownshirts, smashing things up for the sheer kicks and power rush

Something quite depressing about the way a once radical open access arts festival has become a de facto platform for politicians to soften their image and trail bland commentary in front of pliable crowds.

There was a time when the government would piss on us and tell us it was raining; now they're pissing on us and telling us it's piss.

Great North Run for UNICEF's Gaza Appeal Help Eve Livingston raise money to support UNICEF UK

I've been in denial (hence the last minute fundraising) but I can no longer ignore the fact that this non-runner is doing a half-marathon in September following an ill-advised bet...

I'm fundraising for UNICEF's Gaza Appeal & am so grateful for any donations:

www.justgiving.com/page/eve-liv...

No More Lies Grant McPhee explores the extraordinary claims made about the financial benefits to the city blockbuster films being made in Glasgow. What does this reveal about the strategy and transparency of th…

Also a classic post-devo neoliberal policy failure
bellacaledonia.org.uk/2022/04/18/n...

Thatcher’s right to buy policy is celebrated but here’s the cost: losses to us all of £194bn and a fractured society | David Madden A new report details the damage. This was an ideological ploy from which we have yet to recover, says LSE’s David Madden

“Resolving the housing crisis depends upon reversing and replacing the changes to the British housing system and society that Right to Buy helped to bring about.”

Our latest report covered by @davidjmadden.bsky.social in @theguardian.com 🔗👇

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Not sure how much leverage they have beyond reporting lack of access, which they did. Most war zones have multiple routes in - Gaza is an open air prison where the gaolers get to say yes or no. Much bigger issues around accepting IDF framing and seeking balance in a totally asymmetric conflict.

The Left Isn’t the Right. Here’s Why That’s Bad News for the Left

By A. Centrist

Incredibly instructive reporting on what appears well on its way to becoming the biggest, most concentrated, most energy- and resource-intensive, and most speculative wave of capital investment ever.
ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...

"We make brand transformation an inclusive experience of engagement that finds authentic purpose and key points of differentiation that can drive momentum at scale and pace."

At some point, someone must have said this out loud, and no-one screamed and threw a teapot at their head. Consider that.

It’s not all about media. But the collapse of a way for government to get a hearing on what’s becoming the new mainstream media (ie short form algorithm-selected video platforms) is such a part of this. Talk to journalists who “do words” or “timely news” and they can feel the audience moving there.

The live streamed starving of children is of course a catastrophe in so many more immediate ways. But I don’t think liberal democracies can endure when such depravity is a matter of debate. As in the 20th C the techniques/ideologies of colonial genocide will eventually come home and turn inwards

Louder suffering must be met with ever more obscene privilege - that’s what we are all being primed for. On some level the current genocide is a test run for liberal democratic tolerance of a post-humanitarian world.

Dragging the world’s media around Scotland for a golf trip in the middle of a genocide that you could stop in an instant is is just another effort to desensitise public opinion towards the over-arching Trump project to turn the White House into a new Versailles.

A 'good constituency MP'? how ‘hard working local politicians’ are facilitating a genocide I ran into my MP today...

I wrote this up - how “hard working local MPs” are facilitating a genocide:

open.substack.com/pub/abolishw...

Had my MP @chrismurraymp.bsky.social at the door. I told him I’d just had to ask my publisher if they can redact a line of my book because of his vote to proscribe Palestine Action. He said he “didn’t want to talk about that”.

Seriously, Labour voters, is this the government you wanted? Is this what the UK needs?

The crux of this Warwick story is that universities are terrible at being businesses because large parts of them simply aren’t one

It’s worse than “Gaza is being starved and destroyed and no one cares.” It’s that hundreds of millions *do* care and are powerless to stop it. We need a world where that can never happen, where the masses actually have political power.

yesterday we were told water bills will rise by 30%, today we were told household shopping costs will rise by £275, but apparently the real problem is my wife

Normally they expect you to be happy about the circumstances of your arrest.

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz So what's the plan here? We just sit and watch Israel starve Gaza to death with the support of our own governments? And then what? We just go along with our lives, knowing that that happened? That this is what we are as a society? That our civilization is comfortable allowing something like that to happen? And that our rulers could do the same thing to another inconvenient population at any time? We're just meant to be cool with that? And go on living like it's normal? I'm genuinely curious. How exactly is everyone planning to go about living their lives after that point? How does that work, exactly?

An unbearably sad statement from the Editorial Committee (SDJ) of the AFP news agency, please read:

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die.
AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip… /1

Fighting Age Males [2 columns of text. The column on the right starts first. It is narrow, 1-3 words per line. At the end the lines become longer but more broken and fragmented. The text is transcribed below] video taken on a phone silent men walking through the rubble young men, boys really old men dust and concrete an armchair now and then a part of lamp shards of once lived-in domesticity the men have found someone a child under the wreckage dust still alive one man pulls the child out lifts him up into the strong safe heat of his arms they look to the sky and praise God scroll on still image now men stood against a wall in a line warm colour of their fleshy human skin stark against grey all naked blindfold heads bowed soft bellies skinny legs the shameful shock of it oh fuck scroll past - scroll back- naked men gun point young men, boys really old men thirty to forty fighting age males stripped with hands bound not civilians it says but fighting age at them it says look at these males it says look men look at these Arab men look see look that are these fighting age males look [see alt text of following post for text of left column]

remembered this today, which I wrote back at the end of 2023, and thought about how most of the people in the images and videos that prompted it will likely be dead now. My son is about to turn 7

Pretty thoroughly depressing to live in a country where big, important institutions — like universities, the BBC, the Labour party — seem only ever to be run by people who seem to really dislike them.

A joy to make this - I may even have (marginally) improved my (woeful) game in the process

bsky.app/profile/asls...