CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@VictimOfSimony yeah, I'm not really seeing anything you're saying. The Bronx comment was weird, too.

@VictimOfSimony also, I think we on the left need to reduce the time and energy we spend on national elections and focus our attention in other places. We shouldn't ignore it completely, but some of us spend 100% of our time worrying about the next president.

@VictimOfSimony I think it's a matter of understanding the limitations of elections.

Elections aren't going to bring us to the promised land. At best, they buy us time and give us mild quality of life changes.

Elections can also be symbolic. Electing AOC sends a message. It won't change the world but it's a good strategic move.

Also, meaningless but, I kinda love that she has an acronym for a name. It's kind of badass so long as she likes it.

Also, I don't know how I feel about the comments like "oh I like AOC but she won't win because of misogyny"

Sometimes it feels like the call is coming from inside the house. Also, the type of misogyny AOC faces is specific to her ethnicity.

If we can't identify the correct bias, how could we ever look inside ourselves to unlearn and relearn?

We're so late in the game and so many of us still haven't identified the problem.

It's not that Democrats aren't fierce. Their affliction isn't a lack of will.

Democrats won't fight for Democratic Socialism, or any populist movement because they are red-blooded capitalists with a stock portfolio and corporate donors who dictate what they can and can't fight for.

So, we need politicians who share our morals and political ideals, fierce or not.

(AOC is the best of the worst so I'll take it.)

@cxiao even trying to log back into my account, I had to reset my password and it brings me to this page each time.

@cxiao thanks. I'm sure the community would be welcoming. But I've had no success joining.

@cxiao thanks! I've been down this road. It was maybe a year or so ago so I don't remember the details but I do know I never got a reply back

This thread took a turn lol but as I was writing it I remembered that I emailed Wikipedia asking for help with the block and never received a reply.

I was reading some very incorrect history about the Ponce Massacre with dubious sources and I, ask a Puerto Rican who knows the history, couldn't do anything about it.

I follow a lot of Wikipedians. They're great. Honestly one of my favorite internet communities.

But, of course, the American Wikipedia community is disproportionately white. And there isn't much curiosity as to why.

That is what irks me. If you're a part of a community that lacks diversity, it is your responsibility to ask why.

It'd be great to get in there and edit some of these pages, but my network is completely blocked from authoring Wikipedia entries.

Which, then makes me wonder, how Wikipedia's policy for blocking networks is effecting diversity. My neighborhood is mostly Puerto Rican and other Caribbean people. None of us are able to participate in the authoring of our own history because Wikipedia blocks us.

The Situationists were certainly inspired by Marxist philosophy, but no more than surrealist and Dadaism. Offical Culture and the spectacle are observations independent of Marxism.

But that description is less scary I suppose.

I sometimes wonder, in the past 3 or so years, if there was a mass effort to rewrite history on Wikipedia, and to make leftist theories scary to the lay.

Look at the intro paragraphs for "official culture" written in 2023 (left) vs today (right).

Could they shove the term "Marxist" in there more? Lmao.

(Idk where the pun came from. Some deep crevasse that I don't want to find again)

This is a truly unfortunate matrix of power and influence. The average person fleeing from the corporate web will view the IndieWeb as a safe space, only to later find out it's, at best, controlled opposition.

The capital-I-IndieWeb, and capital S-Social Web are not anti-corporate, despite their marketing language that lures us in. But once you're inside, IndieWeb leaders will defend corporate social media, directly or indirect.

Some of them truly believe we cannot move forward without Meta. It's an affliction of the imagination. Some of them come from Big Tech companies, like leaders of IndieWebDotOrg, and some of them were paid off like the Social Web Foundation.

@pluralistic I love that you write your essay out first then chop it up for Mastodon.

I write a thread on mastodon then edit it for my blog. I'm not sure that's the most efficient way to do it.

@pluralistic oh im early to a Doctorow thread

I think it's the feeling of being courted. Centrists love knowing that democrats rack their brains trying to figure out the correct level of compromise; the exact number of dead bodies it'll take to garner their favor.

Remember, Atlanta progressives put Biden in the White House. Centrists brought Trump back.

/rant