Accessibility stuff

War is one of the problems caused by the state, which once it has begun, is very hard to overcome without the structure of the state. It's a ratchet that only gets tighter the more you try to move it. I don't think there is a day on earth in which war is not being waged somewhere.

My heart aches for the people in Ukraine who are fighting, who have died, who have lost family and friends, who have had to flee their homes. And for Russian soldiers who have deserted and refused to kill, for the Russians who have been imprisoned for protesting the war even though they cannot stop it.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/institute-for-precarious-consciousness-we-are-all-very-anxious

The Sea of Ice - Caspar David Friedrich

Is it misogynist?

Yes

It's also a disaster for men, it fails on it's own terms while undermining the possibility of integrating 100+ years of feminist discourse into questioning whats wrong with the male experience and imagining what it could become.

If they were serious about any of this, not just a horny death cult, they'd be a prison abolition movement.

Didn't realise Whoopi Goldberg was on raddle.

So this is

1. A rhetorical device that lets non-white people vent about white people in public without being accused of being hypocritical. They don't really care about it's accuracy they just don't want to engage with people who are interested in white racism. I empathize
2. An attempt to separate out two very different concepts that share the same word. For me it's similar to the word politics, which people often use to mean reflecting or acting on the state of the world. But for many it also means accruing power or manipulating others.

It's not the one true definition, just choose the tool that suits your purpose.

I prefer to think of laws a bit like the weather. Depending on what you want to do sometimes the conditions are better, sometimes they are worse, but you're ultimately going to be subjected to forces beyond your control.

What's more useful for anarchists is to think about how they can respond to the situations they find themselves in. For me, with Covid, that looks a bit like setting boundaries that I expect others to respect when they interact with me and actively finding out what other people's boundaries are. Building consent into our interactions shouldn't be a difficult or uncomfortable thing for anarchists to do, it's part of prefiguring a world that doesn't need laws to enforce a base line of behavior.

No, so perhaps I shouldn't bother answering, read on for ill informed speculation.

I listened to a bunch of interviews with David Wengrow and I think the point about there being these two competing, quite black/white interpretations of pre-civ people is valid. A lot of anti-civ thought lives in the "noble savage" category and a lot of anti-civ detractors fall into the "nasty, brutish and short" category.

I don't really lust for a return to some imagined utopia, it is enough to know that other ways of living have existed and so the current state of affairs is not the only possibility. With that in mind, a book that adds to those examples is a positive thing.

What didn't come across in the interviews but maybe does in the book is the question of inertia. To me this is at the heart of civilization, the feeling that even those who are in charge don't really have the power to make any radical changes. That is the reason why someone would want to undo civilization, to open up the possibility of any alternative at all.

Unhelpful suggestion...

Start your own assistant dog charity for people who aren't cops. Call it All Cats Are Bastards. Get free money from funders. Get an ungovernable amount of dogs. Now who's laughing poppy shaggers?

Seriously though the UK is atrocious and I'm here for the rant.

https://raddle.me/wiki/podcasts is a similar project perhaps you could see if there's anything missing and add to it?

It's possible to make a deal with the devil and turn on the read-aloud feature on google play books but obviously that means sending the whole text to google and back. The quality is pretty good but depending on the content you might want to consider the surveillance implications.

EDIT: Thinking about the google suggestion, I wonder if there's a way to do this collectively and produce recordings. I'm sure google is pretty hot on stopping random services accessing it though.

This sounds like a good idea, also benders or geodesic domes are cool. This book has plans in the back for domes.

Exciting, good luck!

I'm trying to think about why this makes me feel uncomfortable.

On the one hand I don't really see any harm in people making or enjoying sex toys. Although this type of sex toy feels like it has been sourced from the very bottom of the uncanny valley that's probably a matter of taste.

I think what is probably more unsettling is the values it embodies and the context which it is made in. In a world in which women find themselves acting as men's therapist, mum and fleshlight does this reduce the burden on them or cement that expectation?

Even without that baggage can this really be a substitute for genuine human interaction? Isn't it selling a false cure to the symptoms of isolation and alienation while never addressing the cause?

Does anyone really benefit?

I'd echo what everyone else has said, you want to avoid a single doc for the reasons you've given. you've probably already used markdown posting here so that's a great place to start.

Self contained tools that will let you create, edit, view and search linked documents.

• foam
• zettlr
• obsidian

Command line tools for searching collections of text (markdown) files.

• grep + find
• fzf

Just to be clear.

• I do not think these women deserve this sexist / ableist / ageist treatment.
• I do not experience schadenfreude from reading this article.
• I do wish we could build a culture that makes this unacceptable.
• I am frustrated to see people who have spent years working for oppressive institutions recuperating anti-oppressive politics so that they can.... continue working for oppressive institutions.

Sorry, I missed the part where aging women were super privilaged. I guess all that discrimination against older women is all fake news, huH?

I feel like you're the one doubling down, I made a pretty clear distinction about the women in the article and women in general. I did my best to answer your question. I feel like you're reading my response in bad faith now.

You completely doubled-down on justifying what type of woman we're allowed to discriminate against.

I never said it was OK to discriminate against them.

This is a sort of "'I never thought leopards would eat MY face" story. It's frustrating when people suddenly decide the world is unjust just at the point when it affects them. Maybe I'm just salty because the article opens with someone working for the civil service who have caused me and so many people I know nothing but misery.

What else should we not post?

I'm sorry if you read this as a personal attack, I really didn't mean to upset you.

I commented on the article but you said I was telling you what to post. I see how my response could be taken as insincere but it wasn't, it was just clumsy.

Sorry, I missed the part where aging women were super privilaged. I guess all that discrimination against older women is all fake news, huH?

Not at all but the guardian skews to that demographic.

The first women they talk about works for the civil service here's a breakdown of what what sort of roles they cover. The largest, DWP, has over the last decade overseen the slashing of the welfare resulting in thousands of deaths, especially hard hit have been disabled people. I hope I don't have to explain why the ministry of defense, offender management, etc are not just normal office jobs.

One of the other women listed was a cop. fuck her.

They end with the women who took 5 years out of work on her savings to focus on her mental health. How do you accrue that amount of savings, I'm assuming neither of us will have that luxury when ill health strikes.

But I guess basic empathy doesn't count for people you decide aren't worthy of talking about?

I do empathize with them on this issue, but they (not older women in general) are also part of the problem.

What else should we not post?

I'm sorry if you read this as a personal attack, I really didn't mean to upset you.

Although every individual experience in this article sounds terrible I am sick of articles like this one.

Fundamentally all these institutions are built to grind us into dust and toss us aside as soon as we are not useful. I am tired of relatively privileged sections of society thinking that they are the exception to the rule when suddenly confronted with the reality of the system they have been serving dutifully for decades.

Workplace bullying is endemic in these large institutions in the UK. It is an open secret that you will never be fired, your life will simply be made unlivable until you leave. This is in part due to the strange situation with unions in the UK. Large public bodies are the most unionised but most people regard them as an insurance provider, covering legal expenses if fired or injured at work. As such there is no sense of solidarity between union members / workmates that might make this sort of behavior culturally unacceptable.

Not exactly what you asked for but your might enjoy Queer Ultraviolence - Bashback! Anthology.pdf

Ooooh what a thorny subject.

One of the issues with having a bunch of white dude experts is that you're elevating them to the status of expert over other people. The reality is that everyone has skills that they could share and you don't need to be an expert to help someone.

Likewise attending a series of workshops run by experts isn't really going to help you much if you don't have an interest in that skill and have a place to apply and develop it.

What I think works better is starting with a group of people, assessing what skills they want to develop then doing inter-group skillshares until you reach a ceiling. Then start to branch out and look for support. That way you are actually addressing people's needs and you stop being soley responsible for who ends up running workshops in the future. You also foster a culture of collaboration and support.

• Offer support to groups who don't have those skill sets?
• Dymaxion - Please Stop Writing Secure Messaging Tools
• Office Space - Fractions of a Penny

Isn't this the opposite? l33t hackers trying to rebuild/keep alive tech after the collapse.

mega guillotine - ajj

I don't really have a FOMODA but I miss the intensity of bonds that these spaces bring and the autonomy from personnel / work commitments. I also think there's an aspect of people wanting to test themselves and have limit experiences, it's not always about suffering for "the cause", sometimes it's just about suffering.

I've had similar experiences when doing mutual aid with a group of people who were also largely dependent on that mutual aid. It was less about how can we help people and more about how can we survive in ways that open up possibilities for others to survive and help us too.

Tangent....

Marx has interesting things to say about this when framed as species essence and alienation of labor. He basically says that humans are the only animals that make art, or does labor that isn't contributing to our survival. But that under capitalism all labor becomes essential to survive as we must exchange it for wages to eat, be housed, etc. That this alienates us and denies us an essential part of our being. To work based on desire not need.

I think my experience was the opposite, when mutual aid was not linked to my survival it felt like a hobby or an afterthought. I couldn't connect with the people I was "helping". It certainly didn't feel creative or empowering for me or anyone else.

Sorry about your horrible situation.