Week 40
From an interview w/ #AdamConnover. Interesting take.
Vivek Chibber: "Gore Vidal once said United States has one party with two right wings. So basically they're two corporate parties. They differ in that one of them, around midcentury, did experience some sort of presence on the part of trade unions and then after the 60s was identified with what, you today might call, social justice movements.
But there was never a party that was rooted in the working class that has, as part of its program, some kind of socialist or anti-capitalist agenda. In Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, you had what we call social democratic parties, which were historically parties that had two aspects to them that no American parties ever had... [T]hey were born out of the trade union movement, or they, very early on linked themselves up to the trade union movement. That was their identity. The second is that they had real political programs, a political platform, that was primarily and even exclusively oriented towards advancing working-class interests.. not corporate interests. US has never had that.
Now there's a there's a variety of reasons where that's the case... Part of it has to do with the fact that the US democratized very early. So the US actually had the franchise for working-class white men about a hundred years before any other country did. In Europe, working-class men had to fight for their political rights. So who's going to do that? Because the people lined up against their political rights were the wealthy. So working class men and women had to organize their own political parties to campaign for democratic rights, because every single political party in the in Europe, up until the 1900s, was a rich person's party. They weren't going to fight for democratic rights. The United States, because the American Revolution, got people democratic rights early, they got sucked up into the system without having to organize their own parties. That has a lot to do with why a "Labor Party" was never born... Every single place where you got democracy [except US], it was through working-class parties fighting for it...
[T]here's another reason.. the US conquered more and more of the western regions as it grew, which means that working-class people who were unhappy with their situation were just able to go out and get some land for themselves, instead of having to fight for through a union and through then a political party. [T]his was.. "the frontier". The American frontier kept expanding [and kept unhappy people occupied].
Then the final reason.. because of the racial mix but also the ethnic mix it had a working class was very divided for a very long time and because of that coming together in a party was also hard... These are the three big reasons [why the left is especially weak in US]"
Play Dirty, fantastic work..
Firstpost: "US hiring plans hit 16-year low as labour market stagnates"
"I can correct problems at the 'system prompt' [nudging AI this way or that way, via external direction". Well now you are just patching stuff, that is not how these things are supposed to perform.
Does (neural net driven, LLM) AI have safe algorithms for medicine? I ask bcz traditionally these approaches are pretty bad for planning, deep thought, diagnosis.
Politico: "The Trump administration has a message for the biggest names in health care and tech: You won’t control the development of artificial intelligence in medicine. Top officials at the Department of Health and Human Services tell POLITICO that the administration does not support a multi-year quasi-regulatory effort by firms including Microsoft and OpenAI, and health systems including the Mayo Clinic and Duke Health, to pilot private-sector-led vetting of AI tools under the banner of the Coalition for Health AI.
'They don’t speak for us,' Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill said to POLITICO. The coalition, he added, threatens to become a 'cartel' in which big companies squelch startups and corner the booming market for artificial intelligence in health care. He said he’s heard from industry 'that if you want to work in the space, you have to be a member, and we just want to make clear that that is not the case.'"
RT: "Putin compares ideology of modern West to USSR.. The Soviet Union imposed its system on others, and it didn’t last, the president reminded"
The New Republic: "Oracle CEO Safra Catz—who is currently leading the acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. assets—told former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2015 that they had to 'embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.'"
Chibber, Confronting Capitalism: "After more than forty years of neoliberalism, the road back to sanity is going to be a long one. And it is by no means certain that we will achieve it. Even while free market fundamentalism is ideologically weakened, it is still a strong political force. For the latter to change, the Left will have to gather up its strength at a scale we have not seen since midcentury."
Vivek Chibber, The Class Matrix: "The particular strategies chosen by elites were situationally specific. In Britain and France, the charge to dismantle social democratic institutions seems to have been taken by political parties, with employers waiting to see if the waters were safe and then diving in as labor’s weakness became clear...
Swedish employers seemed to have been spurred to action in the late 1970s as the Social Democrats unveiled the Meidner Plan, an initiative that proposed to gradually transfer control over capital to Swedish unions. After mobilizing successfully to block its adoption, employers gradually ramped up their political campaign. They led the charge to dismantle Sweden’s famed [social] institutions, the centerpiece of which was the sectoral peak bargaining system, and by the early 1990s had succeeded in the endeavor...
Germany followed a similar path of employer-led restructuring. Reunification with the East opened up a vast zone of nonunionized labor in the newly in- corporated regions, which put downward pressure on wages, and employers lost no time in demanding concessions from workers in the very core of the manufacturing sector... By the early 2000s, German unions were holding on as best they could but were unable to hold off employers’ escalating attacks, not just on bargaining institutions but also on the welfare state itself..
Now, there is ample ground for debate about the specifics of each case. But the basic fact of capitalists’ participation in the dismantling of redistributive institutions is beyond dispute. This reaction from employers is important because it undermines the prediction that they might learn to accept social democracy once it is in place owing to its growth-enhancing effects. Had they learned to appreciate the latter, one might reasonably expect that, at least in a substantial plurality of the cases, their reaction to labor’s weakened state would be to step in and shore up social democratic institutions. So, where labor’s hand was failing, they would compensate for its reduced effectiveness. What we find, however, is a consistent pattern in their reactions—across the board, they showed an enduring hostility to the redistributive institutions."
TAC: "Late-night hosts on broadcast television are uniformly and almost banally liberal. They have sacrificed much of the comedic and entertainment value of their shows by offering bad political commentary under the guise of monologues. Most importantly, they have decided to appeal to at best half of an already declining audience."
The strongest power center in US is the private complex, but not all members of that group have equal reach in all aspects of shady operations. If you are Coca-Cola you can have a union leader assasinated in Columbia, no problem. You have that power. If you are in the oil/gas/energy complex, you can have a Kennedy assasinated, that is within your reach, as long as form the right alliances, get buddy-buddy with a few other power centers. Texas oil interests worked with LBJ, and they had JFK assasinated.
But when the oil/gas/energy complex protested against the passage Iran-Libya Sanction Act in 1996, they were ignored, because the military-industrial complex (using AIPAC as their cover and lobbying arm) wanted that law, it was aligned with their interests, would indirectly create more profits for their weapon sales, increase the specter of conflict in West Asia.
MIC is the big dog here... Even their lowly members can have you shot, have you killed in broad daylight, like those two people who went against Hewlett Packard and "handled", in the same day. Snap. Gone.
That is why the real shooter who assasinated Charlie Kirk is likely an MIC operative, the only group who could have arranged something this big and daring.
An over-engineered piece of work... That is ACA
Year 2025 and the US is still arguing whether or not to subsidize / prop up Obamacare.
Even if the capability is there it would be too risky to rely on it when nuclear weapons are involved. US might as well assume M.A.D.
Did DJT just say they can pinpoint the locations of Russian nuclear weapons but US' are invisible (giving US an advantage in a first-strike scenario)? That can warrant a little investigation. MSM, chop chop #MilitarySpeech
Al-Jazeera: "Trump has issued an executive order in which the United States pledges to guarantee Qatar’s security – including retaliatory military action – if the country were to come under attack again, in the wake of Israel’s unprecedented air strikes on the country last month that drew regional and global outrage."
"@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org
🔥 Big update: the PeerTube co-op idea is taking off.
Yesterday I shared the proposal publicly—and the response has been outstanding. Seven people have already stepped up to become founder-members, ready to build a member-owned, democratically governed alternative to corporate video platforms.
What started as a loose idea is now a real plan—and credit goes to @Crissy for pushing me to turn the idea into a proper proposal.
We’re at the early stages: talking with existing Fediverse co-ops, and I’ve reached out to the BC Co-op Association to guide us through incorporation. Next up: drafting bylaws, shaping governance, and laying a solid foundation together.
Once incorporated, member-owners will decide everything—policies, hosting practices, monetization models. This isn’t just another social media platform. It’s a co-operative effort to build something transparent, resilient, and ours.
If this speaks to you—if you want to help shape a new, community-owned video platform—get in touch. This is how alternatives get built."
NYT: "Secretive Program That Keeps Ukraine’s Weapons Firing Is Suddenly in Doubt.. A Czech Republic-led effort gathers munitions for Kyiv from around the world, but an opposition party expected to win elections there has vowed to drop it.'
"@DF3LX@social.darc.de
@m @GossiTheDog You mean the Vibe President?"
"@m@martinh.net
@GossiTheDog Strong possibility that this is only happening so that the VP of Vibes can strut out onto a stage while gyrating unconvincingly to the tune of a certain Bee Gees song..."
"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
Microsoft today"
"For the past 15 years, F-Droid has provided a safe and secure haven for Android users around the world to find and install free and open source apps. When contrasted with the commercial app stores — of which the Google Play store is the most prominent — the differences are stark: they are hotbeds of spyware and scams, blatantly promoting apps that prey on their users through attempts to monetize their attention and mine their intimate information through any means necessary, including trickery and dark patterns.
F-Droid is different. It distributes apps that have been validated to work for the user’s interests, rather than for the interests of the app’s distributors. The way F-Droid works is simple: when a developer creates an app and hosts the source code publicly somewhere, the F-Droid team reviews it, inspecting it to ensure that it is completely open source and contains no undocumented anti-features such as advertisements or trackers. Once it passes inspection, the F-Droid build service compiles and packages the app to make it ready for distribution."
"@don_atoms@hostux.social
For 15 years, F-Droid has been the antidote to Google Play: no trackers, no ads, just open source apps. Now, Google wants to kill it.
Under the guise of 'security', Google is forcing devs to register, pay, and surrender control. F-Droid can’t comply without betraying its principles. Thousands of apps could vanish overnight.
Fight back: demand sideloading rights, pressure regulators/Parliament, and defend one of the safe harbors for ethical tech."
"@Geri@mastodon.online
Labour Party members have voted to accept that a genocide is taking place in #Gaza by Israel - putting pressure on the government to also do so."
Who Has the Money? #Stevenson
Racially if they are tigga as in from the East they are only mildly related to Anatolia, they can be similar to the extent they are regionally close, same way as the Greeks are, or the Arabs. In Asia Minor this is an assimilated race, present in the tomato soup (not melting pot) which did not change the overall structure as much. The official "T-word" narrative is based on a lie.
Just talked abt these guys the other day didn't we? The Gagauz.. My tigga
"Gagauzia head faces court: recent developments.. 'No matter what the pro-government media outlets say, I am tried today because I am Gagauzia's head,' Evghenia Gutsul stated"
Congress is a corporate infested bizarre place.. If something like Jan 6 happens again I'd bring a f-king bazooka.
"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Federal Emergency Management Agency had an undisclosed CitrixBleed2 incident which lead to a widespread incident and data theft from the USG.
24 people have been fired over the incident.
The USG really needs to have a word with Citrix over this one btw as it’s a textbook example of a vendor prioritising its own interests over the interests of its customers, in this case the USG.
It wasn’t the only federal government function that got compromised. Very weird the cybersecurity response basically got outsourced to a porg with a Windows XP avatar on Mastodon [he is referring to himself]."
#Galloway #Arrest
Pressure must have been intense to have anti-Mamdani votes united in one candidate..
Politico: "Eric Adams ends reelection campaign.. The beleaguered New York City mayor’s bid was hampered by legal problems, a lack of money and unshakable ties to President Donald Trump"
"AI Scalers", and their LLM approach already hit an upper limit of growth, there is no more improvements to be had by simply scaling, and the end result is still pretty stupid. Throwing more hardware at the problem is not improving the product.
I am on the "AI Designers'" side of that argument..
Video talks about a new approach too that performs better on reasoning tasks, with smaller footprint.
"Are We at the End of AI Progress?"
ProPublica: "Psychiatric hospitals — increasingly owned by for-profit corporations — are illegally turning away patients during crises. Yet only a handful face penalties, with fines that are trivial [our] investigation found."
The Guardian: "After announcing plans to recognise a Palestinian state, Australia’s decision to reject visa application from far-right Knesset member heightens tensions with Israel"
"Why Are Zionists SUDDENLY Warning of Another 9/11?" #Werleman
"A majority of British 18 to 24 year olds do not believe that Israel should exist, a poll has revealed."
CNBC: "The resilient stock market may be keeping the economy out of a recession. Why that's a bad thing.. Consumers with larger stock holdings are feeling fine, while those with smaller or no holdings are not"
Ukraine is like Palestine fighting the 'Goliath' that is Russia? Just like Pals are fighting the Goliath Israel.?
That's where you are wrong.. The Goliath in this picture is NATO. Russia is David fighting an existential war against them via proxy.
Kimmel is saved.. I can ignore the excessive Red vs Blue hacky shit, but can't they get someone funnier?
When I wrote that an Alaskan responded "oh yea we know abt that, the Unuit, etc". That makes sense, the immigrants would be passing through there. Some could've stayed behind.
Unending "memes" comparing Americans to immigrants of sorts who could be seen a type of immigrants to relative to the "natives" of America... Let's not forget the so-called natives also emigrated from somewhere else. A long time ago, sure, but they crossed the Bering Strait to get there from Asia. They did not evolve there, as humans did in Africa. They left, and arrived to new lands.
Watched Sneakers (1992), ahead of its time in some ways, starring Robert Redford. RIP
#Ukraine 09/19 - 09/27