The Luddite / is on Nostr

Once, long ago, we were miserable. We lived in cold, dark caves, until someone figured out fire, which lead directly to the iPhone. Most of that happened very slowly, but then we came up with capitalism. Suddenly, we went from no iPhones for 200,000 years, to the iPhone 15 — all in the last two decades!

We all know that technology is progress, but progress towards what? Where exactly are we going? And who the hell is driving? What are computers even for, and why do I need one in my fridge?

site: https://theluddite.org/
Profile Pic Description: Drawing of a wrench jamming some gears
Languages: EN, ES, FR

Last Notes

2024-08-29 14:34:50

Patriotism is the state's knockoff brand solidarity that dilutes it with loyalty to a machine of violence at the border and abroad.

2024-08-16 17:45:50

I'm doing a huge deploy on a Friday afternoon. Client's call against my advice. Thoughts and prayers please. I don't want to pull a CrowdStrike.

2024-08-12 20:53:18

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I don't discriminate based on text genre, only content! I actually would love to borrow it, and I can drop off the book that I'm currently borrowing from you that I might've forgotten I have still until right now :)

2024-08-12 16:59:55

Looking for critical texts on gamification. I'm less interested in whether it "works" or not than I am in how it changes users' relationships with the subject matter (like learning a language through duolingo), how tech companies think about their users, how we think about what tech companies are capable of doing... things like that.

2024-06-20 18:21:12

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I'm going to check out both recs. Thanks Susan!
Love your entire solarpunk vibe and project, btw. When people write in to me to say that I'm too bleak, I tell them that that probably won't change, but they should go read/watch/learn about some solarpunk fiction after :)

2024-06-20 16:30:37

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Critics like Luxemberg accused Lenin's idea of a "revolutionary vanguard" of being a new Blanquism, which he denied. Lots of rich debate in that back and forth. Fair warning that Lenin is kind of a bore to read.
There's also texts by early revolutionaries on the general topic of how extreme is too extreme. Trotsky wrote "Terrorism and Communism," for example, though I admit that I haven't read it. Unlike Lenin, Trotsky is usually an engaging writer.

2024-06-20 16:29:21

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Glad to be of service! Though it's been a while, iirc, Malm discusses terrorism by suffragettes a lot. I bet there's some good sufragette lit on the topic, which might be a productive example since most people have a very positive disposition towards that movement.
re:size - That's one of the biggest topics in revolutionary theory. Useful search term is "Blanquism." (cont'd)

2024-06-20 16:02:23

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Many revolutionary theorists argue that there is no such thing as too disruptive, because movements need an extreme flank. Even if the extreme and the mainstream hate each other, they're symbiotic: The flank makes compromise with the reformist camp politically palatable, while the center provides the flank with a path to compromise. I know it's in Malm's "How to Blow Up a Pipeline." I can't remember if he has citations. Might be of interest?

2024-05-25 12:40:04

NYT, just one month apart.
You can tell that we're the good guys because China does it to "forestall any potential unrest," whereas the USA "keeps us safe." with this "rare bipartisan act."
The Chinese government is "always on the lookout for real or perceived threats," but, fortunately for us freedom-lovers in the US, although "the F.B.I. has broken the rules [...] there are ways to prevent abuses [...] without compromising its critical national security value."
https://sb-assemblagees.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/112/501/723/891/918/465/original/49bfb17c8b39b462.png
https://sb-assemblagees.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/112/501/725/575/216/092/original/9286bb1dfd825fa6.png

2024-05-24 12:27:19

The point of solar panels is not to ensure "solar profitability," but to make for a greener, better world. Its profitability is only justified insofar as it moves us towards that goal. If we want to switch to renewables, then sometimes we're going to have surplus, because of how renewables work. This is well known and discussed ad nauseam. If that makes power markets unstable, then the problem is with markets, not with there being too many solar panels.
https://sb-assemblagees.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/112/496/032/305/158/040/original/392052966e1529b1.png

2024-05-23 14:23:00

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In reality, we owe companies nothing. They take as much as they can while giving as little back as possible. It is right and good to treat them the exact same way.
If you can get away with taking time off without telling your manager, do it, as often as you can get away with it. Come in late. Leave early. Take a boozy lunch. That is the right thing to do, especially, but not exclusively, if you feel pressured not to take PTO at all.

2024-05-23 14:18:21

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CNBC even says that millennials "have found workarounds to play hooky," an infantilizing analogy that places millennials as schoolchildren that ought to be disciplined, not adults in their thirties, as I am.
This analogy also misses the most important distinction: School (with its many problems) ostensibly exists for the benefit of children, whereas companies exist for the benefit of shareholders, at the expense of labor.

2024-05-23 14:10:24

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Any reasonable interpretation of these results would conclude that actually it's the companies coming out ahead here. The poll clearly shows that work is creeping into their vacation time, not the other way around.
By interpreting it backwards, they're explicitly supporting that very pressure that the respondents say they feel, shaming them for taking what's left of the vacation to which they are entitled, but during which they're now expected to work.

2024-05-23 14:03:55

"Quiet quitting" discourse has been beaten to death, but now they're adding "quiet vacationing," which seems more sinister to me. CNBC, The Guardian, Newsweek, Business Insider, and more are all running this story.
This is all based on a poll that shows that millennials take "time off" without informing their managers by going on vacation but taking their laptops with them. That same poll shows that 78% of respondents don't take all their PTO, because they feel pressured not to.
https://sb-assemblagees.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/112/490/752/139/967/710/original/f2c2c026e8b575cd.png

2024-05-21 14:08:08

Lots of skeptics are writing lots of good things about the AI hype, but so far, I've encountered relatively few attempts to explain why it's happening at all. Here's my contribution, mostly based Philp Agre's work on the (so-called) internet revolution, which focuses less on the capabilities of the tech itself, as most in mainstream did (and still do), but on the role of a new technology in the ever-present and continuous renegotiation of power within human institutions.
https://theluddite.org/#!post/ai-hype

2024-03-06 19:25:24

Reddit signed a deal with Google to use its data to train LLMs. To celebrate, we made a firefox extension that lets you replace all your comments with any text of your choosing. All we ask is that you not choose something copyrighted. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT on its copyrighted material, and we wouldn't want Reddit's uniquely valuable data to become hopelessly intermingled with that of litigious copyright-holders.
https://theluddite.org/#!post/reddit-extension