Aaron

Journalist, photographer, community organizer. I now work in climate-related communications.

Economic justice & people power.

All opinions belong to my employer, Osiris, Lord of the Dead.
Retweets != economic sanctions.

🏴
(he/him)

(alternate account at 00Aaron@kolektiva.social)

Public Key

npub1ull5p54mj36892pkskufask3m0y6qcccjl3gtstvpswtpyrqtufsxls543

NIP-05 Address

00Aaron_at_social.coop@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsw0l6q62aegarj4qmgtwy7ctgahjdqvvvf0c59c9kqc89sjps97yc5nlq6c

Author Public Key

npub1ull5p54mj36892pkskufask3m0y6qcccjl3gtstvpswtpyrqtufsxls543

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Last Notes

2024-08-04 14:17:28

You guys remember how some months ago it was a big deal when Israel bombed a hospital? Now it's just business as usual.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strikes-kill-five-hospital-gaza-officials-say-after-abortive-talks-2024-08-04/

2024-08-01 14:42:25

Israel continues to target and kill journalists at an unprecedented rate.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/31/two-al-jazeera-reporters-killed-as-israeli-airstrike-hits-car-in-northern-gaza

2024-07-29 15:23:06

More blatant genocide. When Netanyahu said he needed resources so his pubescent murderers could "finish the job" and the shitbag politicians ruling the violent war empire I live under gave him a standing ovation, this is what he meant.
(I'm sure all they have to say is "Hamas was there" based on no evidence at all and it won't be a war crime, anymore.)
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/idf-canada-well-rachel-corrie-rafah-water

2024-07-23 16:12:47

"The same companies that spewed “forever chemicals” linked with cancer and other diseases in neighborhoods around the world are now key players in the development of EV batteries — sometimes with hefty taxpayer support. "
The fact that new industrial chemicals come onto the market decades before regulation catches up, always, means that living in the US will be increasingly toxic to all life.
This country is a cautionary tale in so, so many ways.
https://grist.org/accountability/the-problematic-chemicals-fueling-americas-ev-revolution/

2024-07-09 03:52:57

America is what happens when you let a country's foundational legal document get written by genocidal slave-owning pedophiles.
Shouldn't be surprised!

2024-07-02 14:05:58

This sentence explains a lot about the country:
"An additional headwind was the nearing U.S. election. “If [Donald] Trump were to win, investors saw a significant risk that the massive green hydrogen subsidy enacted as part of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act would disappear,” Eremenko wrote."
Scientific innovation is based on the whims of toxic dudes with money, which in turn is based on the whims of a rather small, elite political class.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/universal-hydrogen-pioneer-of-hydrogen-powered-flight-goes-bust/

2024-07-02 13:56:14

Not sure if this affects @npub1tva…2yl5 but maybe not because you have to enable OEM unlocking before you install GrapheneOS
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-pixel-6-series-phones-bricked-after-factory-reset/

2024-07-01 18:46:43

The Onion is really nailing it these days
https://www.theonion.com/clarence-thomas-torn-over-case-where-both-sides-offer-c-1851566812

2024-06-25 03:32:31

Julian #Assange being free isn't actually a good thing ***specifically because he's expected to plead guilty to the Espionage Act charge(s) as a part of his plea deal***
This means that actually the US government has increased its power to intimidate and prosecute global publishers, if they disseminate gov secrets in the public interest.
People uncritically celebrating Assange's release is the Biden administration having its cake and eating it, too: more dystopian power, but great PR, also.

2024-06-19 16:19:38

Insurance companies premiums, remain heavily invested in fossil fuels, and often refuse to pay for damage caused by weather events exacerbated by the use of those fuels.
America is optimized for middlemen.
But in this case, there is some potential for changing that.
#Climate
https://nysfocus.com/2024/06/10/home-insurance-climate-change-fossil-fuels

2024-06-03 13:47:46

Incompetent tech company tries to force us into believing that persistent surveillance is our friend.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170305/microsoft-windows-recall-ai-screenshots-security-privacy-issues

2024-05-30 17:13:12

Yeah MIT Technology Review, I'm sure that's all they "could" be used for and could never be used to kill brown families inthe countrysides of this who live in areas that have always been subjected to violent colonial forces. 🙄
At this point, this type of omission (how this type of tech, specifically, is financially viable to research because if its violent military applications) is an egregious ethical lapse and journalists should be called out for it.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/30/1092988/ai-directed-drones-could-help-find-lost-hikers-faster/

2024-05-28 20:04:48

A white person just explained to me how I should feel about Joe Biden's commitment to people of color and then blocked me. This is why people love social media.

2024-05-26 18:48:27

America is optimized for predators and middlemen, and credit card companies & processors are both.
Note how the CEO of the convenience store chain says that after labor, the biggest cost of operation comes from swipe fees.
Labor provides a large portion of the value, then the parasites take a huge cut.
America is optimized for predator(y lender)s and middlemen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4RkavtviYU

2024-05-15 13:59:12

Damn. The US is absolutely an oligopoly, through and through
"Enter the Intercept’s general counsel David Bralow, who said he had problems with the article. He didn’t have legal concerns. Bralow instead thought it inopportune, saying that attacking Bezos might not sit well with the Intercept’s own billionaire donor, Pierre Omidyar, especially at a time when he was keeping the organization afloat."
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/why-im-resigning-from-the-intercept

2024-04-24 17:24:10

I saw the film Monkey Man, which was decent, but I loved that it was sort of a pop critique of Hindu nationalism in India.
This is interesting though:
"In one example, an early trailer showed the banners for the political party in the film as saffron — the color of the BJP. In the final film, some of these banners have been changed to red. And presently, it’s still uncertain if Monkey Man will screen in India at all."
https://www.vox.com/culture/24133477/monkey-man-politics-india-elections-modi-hindu-nationalism

2024-04-21 18:13:18

Attacks on #speech and #expression are advancing very quickly.
I started a local video-focused publication (Striking Distance Ithaca) and just honored a request by someone at a protest to remove a video because they're now being harassed online by thousands of people for speaking at anti-genocide protests.
#Palestine #Gaza
#Fascism is advancing quickly. I really hope people can take this seriously and plan their lives, and build their courage accordingly.

2024-04-16 15:13:25

We live under fascism.
Imagine if the underlying principle here (that a person that organizes X can be prosecuted for unlawful actions of anyone that participates in X)
imagine if that principal was applied to let's say, the cops? Or the government? Or even corporations?
But no, it's applied to protests.
https://www.vox.com/scotus/24080080/supreme-court-mckesson-doe-first-amendment-protest-black-lives-matter

2024-04-03 22:55:02

Today in America! A genocidal old man wants to keep the keys to the nukes and the empire that's allowed to bomb and invade anyone without consequences, and a fascist old rapist wants to take them instead!
230+ more days of having our brains beat out by this fact, rehashed by every news outlet in as many ways as possible.
God do I love "democracy"

2024-03-31 22:07:00

Dystopia Now
https://jacobin.com/2024/03/police-foundations-dark-money-donations/

2024-03-15 18:17:45

The FBI continues its shameful, anti-Indigenous legacy.
"The biggest beneficiary of federal law enforcement’s spending was Energy Transfer Partners.
Energy Transfer Partners also sought to influence the FBI. It was the FBI, however, that initiated its relationship with the company."
This is the directed use of large amounts of public funds in support of private (#FossilFuel) interests.
#Indigenous peoples in the US already live under #Fascism
#Climate #ClimateChange
https://grist.org/indigenous/fbi-informant-standing-rock-protest-court-documents-surveillance/

2024-03-08 12:23:45

A separate journalistic investigation finds that New York Times published its "blockbuster" story riddled with errors-- harmful propaganda to support the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Never forget how NYT, the US government, and the Israeli government have spread lies and misinformation for the sake of committing genocide.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/03/05/israel-hamas-oct7-report-gaza

2024-03-05 14:42:54

As you might know, the #NewYorkTimes published an embarrassing fiasco of a piece on the supposed (unsubstantiated) thesis that Hamas committed systematic sexual violence as a weapon of war.
The Intercept had done some coverage of this in the Intercepted podcast, and in a previous piece, and this one gets into the jarring internal failures--failures that have caused incredible harm--of the publication.
It's long, but worth the read.
#Journalism #Gaza #Palestine
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/

2024-02-15 16:04:21

Because our local news outlets have gotten in the habit of only covering stuff that pops up on a listserv, stuff the cops say, and the weather, I started a sort of local news publication with me and my friends volunteering our efforts.
Indigenous affairs coverage is particularly awful in this area, so this article by Ken Wolkin gives an update on the Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ sovereignty struggle.
#Ithaca #Journalism #LocalJournalism #MovementJournalism
https://striking-distance.com/indepth/feb2024-gayogohono-update

2024-02-02 22:14:28

Happy Friday! I was bored at work so I made an empirically accurate infographic about #ClimateChange and #Climate solutions under the market supremecist religion that we all live under.
I work in climate comms and I guarantee you, all I'm allowed to do is tell people how great it is to buy heat pumps and electric vehicles, but in a very convoluted way.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/111/864/158/804/242/394/original/63465eda1eddc808.jpg

2024-01-27 17:43:07

When it comes to time management, it seems I have to do things either immediately or never. Those are the only two options.

2024-01-25 15:04:36

If you have the grit to do it, now is the time to build the alternatives that'll catch us as all institutions of the old ways fail, catastrophically.

2024-01-23 18:42:58

Very cool investigative #Journalism opportunity from @npub16nx…rj8k
https://www.propublica.org/article/propublica-investigative-editor-training-program-2024

2024-01-23 14:09:27

It would be good if there was a law where if you're dealing with a state bureaucracy or a bureaucracy that relates to a basic necessities intermediated by an oligopoly (like healthcare & insurance), that anyone should be able to document and invoice the entity for time spent on hold, or being given a runaround.
Because otherwise, underfunded government offices and profit-first insurance companies have the perverse incentive to make a process of contacting them as onerous as possible.
#TimeTax

2024-01-18 03:08:08

Yesterday the US said it wanted to de-escalate the tension in the Middle East.
Today the US bombed Yemen again.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/111/774/743/787/978/171/original/f131ec416647f1f3.jpg

2024-01-17 16:11:19

To me, the most frustrating thing about capitalism is not that it exploits everything and commodifies everything and then, ultimately, turns all those things into trash.
The most frustrating thing about capitalism is that it has created such intellectual decay among most humans, that it is deemed as normal to accept that if something cannot be solved by the market, then it cannot be solved at all.

2024-01-17 14:56:56

“People shouldn’t be panicking about the concentration of plastics in their food, with the caveat of ‘yet’,” he said. “We need to do a lot more science.”
Lol humans (as dominated by the death cult ideology of capitalism) are so fucking stupid.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/01/12/microplastics-fish-chicken-tofu-protein/

2024-01-13 15:22:24

"Thanks in large part to pressure from the US, reporting military emissions is voluntary"
This of course is because the US's war empire generates more emission than most nations on Earth.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/gaza-israel-war-hamas-carbon-emissions-climate-damage/

2024-01-11 15:29:32

Israeli spokespeople are actually rabid, hateful, genocidal fucks. On BBC just now, one of the spokespeople all but excused the slaughter of children is saying that Palestinian children often have explosives in their backpacks.
And, literally the only argument given in defense of Israel is, "Because of who we are, ethnically, any criticism of anything we ever do is a hate crime."

2024-01-09 23:50:09

This is a good start
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/09/ftc-x-mode-ban-delete-location-data/

2024-01-09 15:15:36

"For every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times — or a rate 16 times more per death that of Palestinians."
And
"The term “slaughter” was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and “massacre” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2."
This is in NYT, Washington Post, and LA Times
#Gaza #Palestine
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/09/newspapers-israel-palestine-bias-new-york-times/

2023-12-24 02:46:09

Always a good sign.
“People self-censor, people do not even try to report the stories they know won’t get through,” Omer-Man said. “And that is really showing right now in how little regular Israelis are seeing in the press about what is happening in Gaza to Palestinians.”
And
“The Associated Press has agreed, like other organizations, to abide by the rules of the censor."
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/23/israel-military-idf-media-censor/

2023-12-21 18:45:24

Just got a pitch rejected because I'm an "activist"
Things that have required "activism" in recent years:
- believing that reproductive rights are human rights
- believing that civil rights are... good
- believing that Palestinians and LGBTQ folks are human
- believing that judges should be held to a standard of ethics
- believing that destroying our only livable environment is bad
So they want to filter out any people who act on these beliefs, bc everyone else is unfit to inform the public.

2023-12-01 12:55:34

To all the people that keep kissing Biden's ass saying "please be nice to him, he's doing all he can" each time I post criticism of his bullshit #Climate action: he's not.
Very reasonable people in the know understand well that he is not.
He is sacrificing our future because he's spineless. Greenlighting all this new methane gas infrastructure is a direct statement that the Biden Administration cares about money over the well-being of all future generations.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/liquefied-natural-gas/sen-merkley-condemns-biden-admin-for-rubber-stamping-lng-buildout

2023-11-30 14:24:29

- reply

The CEO of Occidental Petroleum, whose subsidiary received over a billion dollars from Biden's Energy Department has called #CarbonCapture a lifeline for the polluting industry and could give the oil industry “license to continue to operate for the next 60, 70, 80 years.”
Biden's administration is spending billions of public funds to give a lifeline to this industry.
#Climate #ClimateChange
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/two-us-projects-highlight-divide-over-carbon-removals-role-climate-fight-2023-11-28/

2023-11-30 14:14:00

The Biden Administration is pumping tons of money into carbon capture, which is explicitly a lifeline for the Oil & Gas Industry, as they openly admit.
Under Biden, the US also became the world's biggest exporter of methane ("natural") gas, which is up to 86x worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
US #Climate action is mostly bs, and only parts that aren't bs are entirely creditable to grassroots movements like Sunrise.
Biden? Greenwasher. Bullshitter. Industry stooge.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29112023/at-cop28-the-united-states-will-stress-an-end-to-fossil-emissions-not-fuels/

2023-11-23 17:44:57

Do you like committing war crimes? You should try money in politics! It does wonders for silencing outrage about the genocide you're committing.
After all, if the state says it's OK to commit mass violence against families and children, that means it's OK! So just co-opt the state.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/us/politics/hill-harper-rashida-tlaib.html

2023-11-22 23:48:37

I wrote a piece on a #Coop alternative to Etsy that just launched, one that puts power back into the hands of artists & makers:
@npub1a8v…60mr (glad they're on Mastodon!)
I didn't realize the extent to which #Etsy had become toxic to sellers until starting interviews for this piece. It's clear that artisans are being drawn to this because an alternative is long overdue.
(there's a tech issue with the authorship at the top; it names me as the author at the bottom)
https://www.shareable.net/artisans-cooperative-an-etsy-alternative-owned-and-run-by-artists-and-makers/

2023-11-15 13:49:12

Latin America wants the US to stop the illegal flow of guns from the US, which is killing innocent Latin Americans.
The US wants China to stop the illegal flow of fentanyl from China, which is killing innocent Americans.
Kind of a bummer when the shoe's on the other foot but you're not doing your part, huh?
1. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-must-stem-iron-river-guns-flowing-latin-america-activists-say-2023-04-18/
2. https://apnews.com/article/fentanyl-us-china-mexico-sanctions-drugs-c9ee14f171f1fcbd4db3452cd0bd1d90

2023-11-12 15:03:19

The Empire
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/12/america-wars-bombing-killing-civilians/

2023-11-03 18:04:01

Unquestioning US support for Israel and the downright refusal to call for a ceasefire is destabilizing the whole region.
The US is destabilizing the region on purpose. None of these developments come as a surprise.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/03/hezbollah-leader-threatens-escalation-in-fighting-with-israel

2023-10-31 13:21:41

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@npub1psd…9sr7 Yes, any criticism of anything is immediately and always the false flag version of that criticism.

2023-10-31 12:23:28

Vry important article on how the market-supremacist way we approach #ClimateChange solutions hurts us all.
"Although the EV rush has reduced tailpipe emissions, it has also entrenched car dependence, which inflicts other kinds of damage."
Think about how #Climate solutions face a crowding-out effect: solutions favored by corporations, like #ElectricVehicles can be a substitute for more transformative change like rethinking travel & transit infrastructure.
#EVs
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-vehicle-cars-evs-tesla-oslo

2023-10-24 00:32:27

Hell yeah, now we're talking. THIS is the cyberpunk kinda stuff I love.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1082189/data-poisoning-artists-fight-generative-ai/

2023-10-14 18:55:47

YouTube now forcing people to turn off ad-blockers pretending like that's because of necessary revenue and not greed, as Google being a general intellectual property thief, scraping websites for content, violating copyright of every book in the world. Love this monopolized world.

2023-09-07 17:21:34

#Cornell owns 45% of proportion of the taxable property value in #Ithaca but is stingy as hell and does not care about the community, refuses to increase its contribution to a reasonable level.
This deal would result in an estimated to be $83 million payment over three decades. Cornell is currently spending $110 on a single building.
This #IvyLeague university is actively working to starve the city it resides in.
Utterly disgusting behavior from Cornell.
https://ithacavoice.org/2023/09/cornell-city-negotiations-stall-over-contribution-disagreement/

2023-08-28 15:41:03

You all know that the #NewYorkTimes helped spread #FossilFuel propaganda for many years, right?
By #NYT's own admission, in the obituary of a propagandist hired by Mobil,
"Mr. Schmertz began buying space on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times to express [Mobil's] views in essay form."
Originally learned this from the brilliant podcast by @npub1xf6…93ps
called Drilled. Highly recommend.
#Climate
https://web.archive.org/web/20180127022944/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/obituaries/herbert-schmertz-87-innovative-public-relations-man-dies-at-87.html

2023-08-21 14:11:42

- reply

@npub1qzc…yetl This piece touches on it (#4) but this funding is actually *worse* than doing nothing:
"”Occidental’s CEO, Vicki Hollub, said at an oil and gas conference in March that direct air capture will help “preserve our industry over time,” lending weight to fears among environmental groups that carbon removal could extend the social license for oil companies to continue operating for decades.”"
#CarbonCapture is actually a greenwashed subsidy for oil & gas.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/11/1077756/the-us-just-invested-more-than-1-billion-into-carbon-removal/

2023-08-18 13:55:07

OK we shall give credit where it's due, kudos to #Cornell for actually listening to its students and community for once and dropping #Starbucks
You cannot proudly serve #Starbucks because Starbucks is an anti-labor, law-violating union buster.
And so they had to go.
If any other universities want to follow suit, let's go!
#Labor
https://truthout.org/articles/cornell-drops-starbucks-after-company-shuttered-all-of-ithacas-unionized-stores/

2023-08-15 18:20:22

If you're going to read just one thing about #Tech today, let it be this.
Great piece by @npub1ynl…873s on the historical context that underpins #automation, with a focus on Charles Babbage.
I'd long suspected that today's overemphasis on *quantitative* metrics was for maintaining control at a distance.
This piece shows how the overemphasis of the surveilled & quantifiable (and neglect of everything else) is a relic of colonial labor needs, but a relic we still revere.
https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/

2023-08-12 20:39:45

I was nervous about this, but it seems *some* judges are able to do their jobs still.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/federal-judge-upholds-arizonans-right-record-police

2023-08-04 04:13:31

Before I was even born, oil and gas companies lobbied too confusingly put recycling symbol one all kinds of stuff that can't be recycled.
https://grist.org/regulation/recycling-bias-study-waste-prevention/

2023-08-03 14:25:42

We need a radical flank, which history must misremember, but who will have saved us all.
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/against-climate-optimism-direct-action/

2023-08-03 14:19:07

Our species is faced with aggressively rethinking its economic underpinnings or committing suicide.
And right now, we are choosing suicide.
"For the climate movement and the broader left to settle for anything less than “mere” political revolution—to resign ourselves to head-in-sand incrementalism while dreaming of an abundant green socialism—is to settle for a global ecocide amounting to genocide for large parts of humanity, primarily in the Global South"
https://thebaffler.com/latest/risk-and-revolution-stephenson

2023-07-09 14:26:22

Soil is one of the few things I believe in and have hope in
#Climate
https://grist.org/agriculture/soil-improvements-could-keep-planet-within-1-5c-heating-target-research-suggests/

2023-06-29 13:00:08

Today the air is toxic as a direct result of the economic systems we live under, but I have gone to work and am contributing to the economic systems we live under.
Is that what you folx are doing too?
I'm so excited for the future.

2023-05-14 13:22:33

"Since his takeover last year, Musk's Twitter has complied with more than 80% of government requests for censorship or surveillance of users, according to a report by the technology publication Rest of World — up from a compliance rate of about 50% before his leadership."
https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-censorship-elon-musk-throttled-tweets-turkey-presidential-election-2023-5

2023-05-11 12:13:13

If the fascists of America ("regressives") chose to use their media apparati to dispute whether the sky is blue, then this fact would be considered politicized.
A couple years later, regressive-majority legislatures would ban the teaching of the sky being blue in classrooms, because it's a political issue.
This is Orwellian, but it is also today's reality. It's what has already happened with climate, gender, and race. Which thing do you all think we'll get silenced on, next?

2023-05-06 14:55:36

BREAKING: Starbucks to shut down *all* Ithaca locations as a part of its union busting efforts.
This means that over 30 people will lose their jobs, as a result of Starbucks' illegal anti-union efforts.
Ithaca was the first city that had 100% of its Starbucks stores unionized & now it will the first city to have all of its Starbucks stores shuttered.
The story hasn't broken locally yet (SB did a news dump last night); message me if you want to cover this
#Labor #Union #Unions #Unionization