Endurance athlete/greeter of cats. My next book is “Beyond Hope: Collective Power and Mutual Care in the Long Emergency,” coming from Verso a few months after I finish writing it. Header image by the great Fay Ballard! #syndicateofinitiative
Public Key
npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78
Profile Code
nprofile1qqstezskypx70g6vdhryrjmqa659zk8suxftecks8wpj3mgn4afpsqspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsxywscw
Author Public Key
npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Show more details
Published at
2023-03-27T15:39:59+02:00 Event JSON
{
"id": "4f74e4ff4467f5fe8efcb96e6b2df414a6dc1999b363c8b8d94c0e9dbb049889" ,
"pubkey": "bc8a16204de7a34c6dc641cb60eea85158f0e192bce2d03b8328ed13af521802" ,
"created_at": 1679924399 ,
"kind": 0 ,
"tags": [
[
"mostr",
"https://social.coop/users/adamgreenfield"
]
],
"content": "{\"name\":\"Adam Greenfield\",\"about\":\"Endurance athlete/greeter of cats. My next book is “Beyond Hope: Collective Power and Mutual Care in the Long Emergency,” coming from Verso a few months after I finish writing it. Header image by the great Fay Ballard! #syndicateofinitiative\",\"picture\":\"https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/accounts/avatars/109/262/330/456/220/087/original/989962198589385a.jpeg\",\"banner\":\"https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/accounts/headers/109/262/330/456/220/087/original/ffa67398e0be7db0.jpg\",\"nip05\":\"[email protected] \"}" ,
"sig": "76a95af4d860047351714b5a4ddfb0c426c07df66c107e20d50ee6c088684895e409919c8fa3019b7bb7cbf502d0a22774ee620773dcfdbcce463cdf404376c4"
}
Last Notes npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield “Mr. Musk has volunteered his sperm” is a strong contender for simultaneously the least surprising and least appealing sentence to ever appear in the New York Times. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield EVENT CANCELED. : . ( npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield So here’s something I’ve been thinking about *a lot* lately. I live in the UK, where (as you may know) our National Health Service, the #NHS, is under severe strain. I believe a lot of that strain is intentional – designed to fracture the system so that it’s easy to privatize – but some of it is organic, and however it arises, it’s a real thing. With the need for access to care increasingly desperate, what I wonder is *why people with healthcare skills are not setting up free clinics*. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield I’m so sorry to have to make this explicit again, but I suppose people keep showing up here (which is good!) and haven’t had a chance yet to fully internalize community norms. So! Please understand that I cannot accept your follow request if you have an empty profile, few or no visible posts, and no other way for me to get a sense of who you are. This goes double if you have a cryptic name and/or an account on an instance that’s likely to be poorly moderated. Thanks for your understanding. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub10dc…pmga [taps side of nose, nods sagely in recognition] npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield What’s vexing me in my PhD at the moment is that the department wants to see a complete introduction and substantive chapter at this checkpoint, and that’s…just not the way I write? How I write is much more like the inkspot theory of counterinsurgency: I start with little sentence- or at most paragraph-length chunks of ideation, and suture them together until they form arguments, then hopefully a fabric. The coherence remains low for most of the way, before going asymptotic toward the very end. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub10dc…pmga Single best piece of gear I ever bought. The detent? The *clack*? Sigh. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Not that he was perfect, or anything of the sort, but I cannot express the joy it gives me to see Stafford Beer’s watchword “the purpose of a system is what it does” at long last pass into common usage, especially among folks with no obvious reason to know who Stafford Beer was. It’s been a vital analytical tool for me this past quarter-century, in all kinds of circumstances. #POSIWID npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield I’m going to make explicit something I’ve been practicing for a while now: I will not boost posts that contain machine learning- (“AI”) generated images, as surely as I will not boost those without alt text, and I encourage you not to do so either. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Sunday! And that means it’s time for this week’s #Lifehouse thread. Last week we talked about the #pragma; this week I want to cover something that I see as at least as important to the idea of a functioning Lifehouse network or federation, which is the distinction between formal openness and a quality I think of as “invitationality.” npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield The philosopher Ivan Illich, one of my go-to influences, died pointlessly and painfully from a tumor which could have been treated - that he could have had at least some respite from but which, in accordance with his beliefs, he refused treatment for. So we don't have to take him as gospel truth in everything. But I think he had a point about technology, and in fact complex systems more generally. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield It’s worth articulating as a general principle that just about any legitimate end one might serve by developing autonomous vehicles you could address far more readily by simply investing in free, accessible public transportation, and getting cars off the road. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Every Sunday for the past month or so, I’ve posted threads previewing my forthcoming book “#Lifehouse” for folks who follow me here. A bunch of them asked me to make yesterday’s thread public, so they could share it with friends they thought might have an interest in it, and after some consideration that’s something I’m willing to do. So please enjoy this discussion of one of the ideas in the book I’m most hoping readers find useful: a neat little bit of social technology I call “the #pragma.” npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Oh! Dudes. Last week I had to write to SPIN to demand attribution for my 1988 William Gibson interview, which they’d credited to “SPIN Staff.” I’ve always been proud of the piece, despite its manifest amateurism, because I pitched it to my editors & believe it is the first-ever interview with Gibson in a mainstream, national outlet. (Quotes from it have been used as blurbs!) Credit where due: SPIN got back to me within minutes, and actually fixed the attribution! https://www.spin.com/2019/08/william-gibson-mona-lisa-overdrive-neuromancer-december-1988-interview-new-romancer/ npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1m4u…7sa6 @npub13vv…0sze I got that, thanks! But why would I do that on a Friday more than any other day of the week? npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub13vv…0sze Can I confess, here and now, that I’ve never understood quite what you mean by your Friday inbox counsel? [hangs head in shame] npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1hpc…hjn3 But I am a reply guy. 😣 npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1c2x…w0nm In the end, perhaps ironically, it’ll be the power and water drawn for ends like crypto and “AI” that dooms us. Absent that, I think we probably would have made it. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Having seen some comments I posted here not merely boosted past my comfort zone locally, but taken off Mastodon entirely and posted on the Web, without my permission, I’m afraid I’m going to have to batten down the hatches again. I’m truly sorry. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield I’ve had a post boosted past my level of equanimity, into the zone where people make scary and weird and inappropriate comments! Hold me in your thoughts! npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Sure, this wannabe-Gilead stuff sounds goofy AF, but *fortune favors the prepared mind*. These troglodytes have an existing network. They have capital. They have a more or less clear sense of what they want to do, and the order they want to do it in. And you better believe they will have a sufficiency of people willing to do the foot-soldiering. We mock them at our peril. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/inside-a-secret-society-of-prominent-right-wing-christian-men-prepping-for-a-national-divorce npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield It can never be said often enough: Garrett Hardin was an unregenerate, overt white supremacist, and you should *never* allow your interlocutors to refer to a or the “tragedy of the commons,” even in casual speech, without making this explicit. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1pdv…gqz2 v nice! what wood did you use? is it treated? npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1esg…6c0v @npub13vv…0sze I read “my weird neighbors” in an “and my dumb chauffeur” tone of voice. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1f5c…hqzn @npub1psd…9sr7 You may – *may* – be right about the high-end prestige product. But never forget the enormous market for what amounts to shovelware, just competently executed enough to keep the kids engaged. I have little doubt that production for this market will be entirely AI-facilitated before the end of next year. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1pdv…gqz2 👊 npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1dyt…q8lq SKA Observatory? I do so hope their tagline is something like, “If there’s a signal out there, we’ll pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.” npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1jf9…936x hello cats…ters. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” – Maya Angelou. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/05/republicans-far-right-extremists-augusto-pinochet-helicopters npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1j5l…wxv4 People around wear Google Glasses a whole bunch then, do they? Don’t give up so easily. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Can we not? npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub13vy…lczv @npub135d…tg9k In US states: Loss of livelihood for those with “subversive” opinions, or who have had same in the past, throughout state employment (including state universities). Closer, and eventually explicit, coordination between police and paramilitaries/militia. Weaponization of the regulatory state. Enlistment of private citizens in “borderwork”/harassment of refugees and undocumented newcomers, eventually extending to the documented but visibly other. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1qjr…kgt0 If you feel seen and spoken to, then you’re right! npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Announcing the Liberation Studies Collective: a regular, shared, silent meditation practice for folks with liberatory politics, however you interpret that. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Once again we must wish for the browser plug-in that tells us which PR, opposition research or “crisis communication” firm sourced each article in the Times and the WaPo. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield I remember reading some “Highlights”-esque magazine in a dentist’s waiting room circa 1980, which in retrospect was clearly paranoid Evangelical propaganda. The main story in the issue I read was a grim, proto-“War on Christmas” dystopia, in which the godless comm’nists had decreed a holiday called Krizmuz at the winter solstice, and all mention of Baby Jesus was punishable by years at hard labor or whatever. From our filthy librul household to yours, then: Merry Krizmuz, everyone! npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1zdp…vqv8 “Mimsy Were The Borogoves,” by “Lewis Padgett,” 1943. The way the italicized “x” sat on the page scared the crap out of me as a kid, and still does. http://jabberwockland.blogspot.com/2007/03/mimsy-were-borogoves-by-lewis-padgett.html npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield I have always liked the salary scheme John Brunner devised toward the end of “The Shockwave Rider,” with jobs being compensated in direct proportion to their social utility, energy requirements and degree of difficulty, danger or unpleasantness. A world where middle-school teachers and care nurses were paid a hundred times what baseball players or newsreaders were would be a good world. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Really, though: if you’re serious about making headway with any kind of degrowth/“postgrowth” strategy, enacting a ban on advertising is where you want to start. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield There are, of course, worse things in the world, but I find it nearly unbearable that all of us are constantly exposed to the banal things Elon Musk thinks, says and does, whether we want to be or not. I cannot remember the last day on which I did not see or hear his name. (I’m doing it to you right now, and I hate it!) He is the very worst of us, and I look forward to a time in which he is first ignored and then forgotten. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Oh, also: I have no time for anyone professing any surprise whatsoever that COP28 is turning out this way. Just what did you expect would happen? All of this and more was predictable the moment they announced it would be held in the UAE – every jot and tittle of it. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Aw, fuck, they’re shutting down TinyLetter. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Israel claims to want to “wipe out” Hamas, and is willing to destroy much of the civilian population of Gaza to do so. Do they not understand that a significant fraction of the survivors will loathe them with an intimately personal fury Hamas could never dream of, and will rise against them in tenfold hate for many decades to come? npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub198f…n2cq Well, I’m glad you found some value in it. But boy *howdy* did I find it abrasive. (I’d concede there are some generally accurate observations about the dynamics of subcultures in there, but they’re all but lost in a chaff cloud of smug, dismissive, defensive posturing, of the type that goes all the way back to “fans are slans.” Some of us are just here to Enjoy the Thing, y’know?) npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub198f…n2cq “muggles”? npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Spot the ABSOLUTELY BASIC error in this otherwise-interesting piece on high-energy cosmic rays. Truly most of us (myself often enough included) are virtually illiterate as to the fundamental contours of being-in-the-universe, and science journalism like this doesn’t help. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/24/amaterasu-extremely-high-energy-particle-detected-falling-to-earth npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield JFC. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield BTW, you have about 24 hours left to buy this wonderful Dianna Settles print, a joint benefit for Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. Support these righteous causes, by picking up some of her fantastic work for yourself. https://hilopress.bigcartel.com/product/dianna-settles-fundraiser-print npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Beloved, the art of these terrible days consists in *threading the needle*. You will have to navigate between premature surrender to doomery and the vacuousness of toxic positivity, between condemning savagery and seeming to endorse the inevitable acts of savagery enacted in revenge. You will have to maintain your compass, when all the Earth is spinning and too many of the ones around you seem to have lost their own bearings. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1e0a…eww0 It has been 26 minutes since you’ve posted this, which is really too early for a fair final determination to be made. But somehow I’m willing to bet that the answer is “No, it won’t.” npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield This whole thing really upsets me quite profoundly. As a writer, I’m not going to turn down a paycheck, but it’s more important to me that people read my books than that I get paid for them. The publishers suing Internet Archive may be acting in someone’s name, but it sure as hell isn’t mine. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html?unlocked_article_code=SHhC1zCbybhNFFee1y2yE7uXqng9k_IfnWuZkvknItNyMGa8BjDb1bXtRT0vokzjJaZZ4n4b5tyDwKHX_OKblh5-fgx1H7U_y940V0RgncogyolvY7rx8-IY95ySMtAVyUXnSCINtoXVM-oHLsNncfS2VAmgWe5FGNQlJzFNLs7K-66gISBTvh364RoH3jmjvdf704Eoq-qNuSQEBshAMCUANLHBkCI9sJKVgDaiOsJwhoCfC2QXb5Kj7uwSQN78xBz6_V4R-HISPaCICnwsD-nwEhWDA0cxHLsC6PWPeRa_hhNetXGpM0wml5p0AqvzzAZ8idCCbUc-qcV9IuZ04aw92MN5ogprGrzF4bSZcBdsGFka7hzM13MxzQ&smid=url-share npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Well, beloved, it’s real. You can preorder my book “Beyond Hope” as of now. If you suspect that #MutualAid, #municipalism or the example of #Rojava suggest strategies to survive a hot, dangerous future, if you want to learn from examples ranging from the Black Panther survival programs to the solidarity clinics of Greece, or if you’re interested in a concrete working-out of #solarpunk ideas in the form of the #Lifehouse community resilience hub, this is the book for you. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Hope-Collective-Mutual-Emergency/dp/1788738357 npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Aberdeenshire, by my count, has two seats at Westminster. Rishi Sunak just fucked the future for the sake of two votes in Parliament, in an election he’s almost certain to lose anyway. I don’t want to ride my hobbyhorse, but if this is how mitigation’s going, we *really* need to think harder about what happens in its failure. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/rishi-sunak-approval-100-new-north-sea-oil-and-gas-licences-fossil-fuel-climate-crisis npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1qmc…v6gx @npub1mdk…aptk Calling the instance right now. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1mdk…aptk @npub1qmc…v6gx You and me both. If only the space weren’t so got-damn preppery. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1mdk…aptk @npub1qmc…v6gx Waaay back in the day, for reasons, I was shown a production run of rudimentary little radios on a single piece of waxed cardboard, that IIRC ran on watch batteries (but cld be solar), were airdroppable, etc. It feels like a super-robust technology & I’m frankly amazed there hasn’t been more (service as well as industrial) design craft lavished on this space. Internetty pursuits ducted off so much of the energy that might have gone toward projects like that. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1qmc…v6gx Is it dumm to think that maybe the disaster/emergency stuff could stand on its own, as a public utility? And not be coupled to the general-purpose what-have-you at all? Last night there were *12* emergency vehicles on our block, and nobody was saying a word about why. I would have *loved* to see what the local firehouse was able to say to the public about it, but I sure as hell don’t want to wade through Twitter to see if they do. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1qmc…v6gx I am so stuck on this one TBH. I absolutely do not want a network for nerds, but I also cherish one where there’s virtually no sports content, very little relating to mainstream pop culture in any medium, where you don’t have to explain why you’re not a “liberal” twenny times an hour, where people are perfectly aware Charles Manson wrote a song for the Beach Boys & the JPL was founded by a Thelemite, etc. etc. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1qmc…v6gx I’m glad you mentioned what happened in Myanmar, and why. I’m glad any time someone mentions what happened in Myanmar, and why. I no lie want “Zuckerberg” to sound like “Himmler” in the ears of generations to come. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1qmc…v6gx Well, Nebelivka obviously, but running neck-and-neck with that the framing that the Enlightenment conception of democracy was foundationally an import from Indigenous North America. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1qmc…v6gx Is it my favorite bits? Tell me it’s not my favorite bits. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield You know what I’d really love? I’d love it if people stopped calling me a “doomer” because I think it’s much too late for carbon mitigation, and that we’ll have to wait for a massive contraction of the planetary economy before any gross reduction in emissions is possible. This is just facing up to the facts, not an admission of species-wide defeat or a counsel of passive acceptance. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1hpc…hjn3 It’s OK, I only use 6% of the functionality in Scrivener, and I’d still go to the mat for it. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield I have to say this about Rebecca Solnit, and it will seem petty but I think it tells: she doesn’t get the details right. I opened her book on walking, and stumbled right out of the gate at her characterization of the Marin Nike site as (IIRC) an “ICBM silo.” I’ve never been able to entirely trust her again after that. And in reporting on matters like the climate, the details aren’t merely the details: they are the story. It matters. Make of that what you will. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/we-cant-afford-to-be-climate-doomers npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Soooooo moving forward can we agree to refer to folk songs as “egregorian chants”? npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1hpc…hjn3 It’s a trifle rich, but at such moments I’m always reminded of what one of my drill sergeants used to bark at me when my arms began to fail in the middle of my last pushup: “PAIN IS JUST WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY.” npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub189n…satx No, some people *really do* this sort of stuff because it’ll help them get ahead at work. That’s the Eichmann lesson. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield I wish I knew how to quit you, Mastodon! Anyway, this is me popping up *again*, when I should be working, to share this, because I think a bunch of you heads would find it interesting. It’s essentially Smaje’s book-length refutation of George Monbiot’s credulous #ecomodernism & advocacy for the application of SV techniques/mindset to mass food production, and a call for “agrarian localism" instead. Anyone concerned with where we’re going to get our #food in the Long Emergency should read it. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1pdv…gqz2 @npub1ac5…73s3 Lovecraft *and* Bookchin? 👀 @npub1y9v…t45y weren’t you looking for something along these lines, or am I making that up? npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1gr8…c639 I see you’ve met my neighbor. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield Sometimes it feels like we’re fated to live out “The Dispossessed,” right here on Mastodon. Here we’re freed from the shackles of the systems that constrained us before, free to make whatever kind of culture we collectively desire, and yet that culture so often feels circumscribed by our dreariness, our failure to imagine, our inability to show up for one other. An ambiguous utopia indeed. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield It took me a long time to realize this, but I find impunity more disturbing than any other form of injustice – the smug, preening self-satisfaction of someone who knows they’ve gotten away with inflicting something life-changingly devastating on another, and will face no consequence for it. npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78 Adam Greenfield @npub1cvv…mv8d I am having a look at swapping out my usual ultralight saddle for the occasion, in favor of something a little more cushiony.
