Okay I’m turning on this activity pub thingy that links to mastodon in some magical way I don’t understand. A few of the folks I used to talk with on Twitter several years ago are on mastodon now. (If you’re one of those and don’t recognize me, I used to be @eatingwords.)
Paul Kingsnorth on conscientious objection to the Machine
Paul Kingsnorth, saying something similar to my post from yesterday: The alternative [to living for the Machine] has always been the same, for millennia, across the world. The alternative is self-denial. It is living within limits, refusing to consume for the Machine, refusing to give the Total System what it wants. It is planting your feet on the ground, living modestly, refusing technology that will enslave you in the name of freedom.
Refusing Empire, telling a new story
One of the main goals of the functionaries of Empire is to bring everything and everyone into the imperial system. Totalization is, in fact, the motivating impulse behind Empire. Empire has a remarkable ability to assimilate threats to the system. Protest movements turn into think tanks. Rebels become a marketing segment. Empire will validate your criticism as a healthy expression of free speech and award you with a position guaranteed to shut you up by paying you off.
Three great apps I learned about from the micro.blog community that I now use every day:
- Ulysses, for writing and sending posts to micro.blog
- NetNewsWire, for RSS feeds (including YouTube channels)
- Raindrop.io, for bookmarks
Everyone now knows that the state is an instrument, a pointy stick which one group of grudgeful weirdos can use to poke at another, and democracy is when the biggest group of weirdos gets to hold the stick. Usually it’s not even about bringing a desired form of society into being; instead, the point is simply to remind your political enemies that you’ve got the stick.
New motto: Anachronism forever!
So Cory Doctorow’s new book is about an accountant?? I’m in. To be fair, it’s a book about a forensic accountant, those Humphrey Bogarts of the accounting world that the rest of us can only admire.
I’ve added my mailing address to my bio so, you know, send me a letter or something!
Stewart Huff killed it yet again at the Comedy Attic. Criminally underrated comedian.
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