I'm rereading The Pushcart War for reasons and am reminded again how it is not only science-fiction (set in the future!) and formally inventive, but also is a manual for collective action, resistance, protest, that is very relevant today. So here's a thread:
For those unfamiliar, The Pushcart War is a children's book by Jean Merrill, copyright 1964, with illustrations by Ronni Solbert, who was Merrill's partner for almost 50 years.
Dec 19, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Also, and I will not stop yelling about this even when I DO like the result: HOLDING A RANDOM POLL WITH NO NOTICE IS NOT A FAIR OR REPRESENTATIVE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS.
Methodology matters. How you phrase the question & possible responses, what times you start and end the poll, how people learn about it, whether everyone has access to it, whether people trust the system (will results be followed? will certain choices lead to repercussions?) -
Dec 18, 2022 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
someone recently told me it was time I published my take on *all this* and, y'know, I already did, ~350k words in 3 volumes, not to mention a bunch of threads. but one more time and shorter:
Who controls information (and attention) rules.
breaking it down (because I wasn't going to make it THAT much shorter, come on):
- democracy is based on people choosing
- people choose based on what they (think they) know
- control what people know, control what they choose
- "legitimate" (because "democratic") control
Nov 18, 2022 • 32 tweets • 6 min read
I've never understood why sports teams have owners (I think I've ranted about this on here before but can't be bothered to crash-test the search function right now). If you've already got a (team of) coach(es) doing the actual sports stuff + a manager dealing with all else...
what is the owner for? what do they do? why, when the team wins, do they get congratulated and go all back-slappy and smug as if they have something to be proud of?
Nov 10, 2022 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
I was extremely honored and thrilled when I was invited last year [the year before? Idk time is a pre-post-modern concept] to guest edit a fiction issue for @PMC_Journal. As we approach publication in this era of fragmentation and digital ephemera, I am inclined to write my intro
as a thread on a platform that may shortly cease to exist, or transform beyond recognition. It's a stretch to say that the once avant-garde elements of early postmodernism -self-awareness, shifting pov, unreliable narrators, kaleidescope & collage - are now where people live, but
Nov 10, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Once we recognize that an individual in control of a major media platform can be a threat to national security, we have to confront that #InformationIsAPublicGood#Infomocracy
And I do mean confront, because I don't expect it to be easy. What are the principles, rules, oversight that protect public information from turning to propaganda? How can we fund it sufficiently while still having public signaling in the way that markets allow? #Infomocracy
May 15, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
reading Elinor Ostrom on commons and it's making me want to fucking SCREAM about how much good research we have on better managing our shit and how little use it's getting because of STUPIDITY and SELFISH COMEMIERDAS
one of the pieces I'm reading is specifically about environmental stewardship which is already extremely RAGE and I'm reading for analogies to the information ecosystem and want to SCREAM
Mar 7, 2022 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
"columnist for the university paper" complains about being censored by the university because people didn't like what she was saying
True story: when I was a columnist at my university newspaper, I was censored by the school newspaper.
I had written a - I was going to say somewhat flippant, but honestly it's been so long I don't know, maybe it was profound, so I'm not going to self-critique - column about
The pull quote from this piece on cybersecurity "it really comes down to individuals being prepared and being secure in their practices" reminded me about how the burden of civil defense during the Cold War was shifted to individuals. news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/…
The full context is even more telling: "But the government is not responsible for private-sector networks. And since most of the critical infrastructure in this country is operated within the private sector, it really comes down to individuals being prepared..."
reminder that countries do not decide to wage war, and nationalities do not decide to wage war. Individuals or groups of individuals with access to the resources of a country decide to wage war.
They may have access to those resources through use of force, or through an election of varying degrees of fairness and freeness, or through heredity, meaning one of their ancestors won them through use of force. They probably depend heavily on propaganda to keep them.
Feb 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
something else we were talking about with @tithenai@drkarenlord@ArkadyMartine@Annaleen@AstroKatie the other night, in the context of those comemierda protests, how words are becoming detached from specific meanings and tied instead to emotional reactions
it's a very propaganda thing - not new, although some of the techniques are new - and a very advertising thing - "all-natural", "cheese product" etc. But disturbing how news sources quote these lines verbatim instead of critiquing
Feb 11, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Was watching Kiki's Delivery Service the other night, and thinking about how: it shows her doing chores as a normal and fine thing, as opposed to Disney movies where chores are demeaning things to be done until prince recognizes true worth and/or forced by annoying parents;
Kiki's parents aren't annoying at all; they care about each other and miss each other AND SHE STILL GOES AWAY AND HAS ADVENTURES WITHOUT THEM WITHOUT ANY CONFLICT
Jan 20, 2022 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
All of this thread.
When I shifted from working on disasters for international NGOs to studying how governments do disasters, I was struck by shift in terminology: NGOs (mostly) do humanitarian work or disaster relief/aid. Governments do emergency management.
INGOs [aim to] follow the humanitarian imperative: those affected are human and need help, ergo we should help them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitar…
Nov 18, 2021 • 28 tweets • 7 min read
We KNOW what to do to solve/slow climate change. Instead of new tech solutions someday/greenwashing increments, what we need to figure out is 1) how to make the change in the face of narrow but powerful interests that don't want to 2) support the vulnerable during the transition
In order to do 1), we first need to be clear that these are narrow, entrenched interests. The fossil fuel industries are not equivalent to the economy; their profit margins do not correlate to high standards of living for us; their interests are not our interests. Further,
oh no starting with way too much reality about the possibility of nuclear explosions, more fiction please
Oct 19, 2021 • 32 tweets • 6 min read
Because of moving and new jobs and so on, I've had to do a lot of paperwork and identification stuff lately, and it keeps bringing me back to Seeing Like a State and how desperately governments try to pin down something as slippery as identity.
One of the examples in SLaS is the institutionalization of last names, and it's fascinating to think about that long moment in which first name and maybe casual identifier (John the Baker, Wang from Qingdao) became insufficient and States felt a family name would do the trick
Oct 18, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
My research on FEMA is mainly related to Katrina, somewhat outdated, but 15 years ago the GOP-led report on Katrina is full of unevidenced ideology that govt is bad at disasters (& everything else) & private sector is better; that moral hazard is an important consideration ergo
rebuilding money was carefully rationed, tied to previous value (rather than building more resilience) and sometimes to insurance too (even though the people without insurance needed more help). This kind of ideology, and the prioritization of assets over humanity, are deeply
Apr 6, 2021 • 25 tweets • 5 min read
Rich countries failed to deal with the pandemic. They failed to prepare for or deal with ice storms & hurricanes. They can't even protect their citizens from poverty. We should stop chasing economic growth and find other aims. My latest for @ForeignPolicyforeignpolicy.com/2021/04/06/cov…
Remember that map of the countries considered best prepared for pandemics? And how it looks next to the map of pandemic statistics?
doing some research on poverty rates and wow the data is sketchy AF
gosh for a global hegemony that's all about 👋🏼economic growth👋🏼 and 👋🏼 markets👋🏼 the State sure isn't trying very hard to see poverty with any accuracy
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