Notices by Gravid Hellward 💀 (nach@mastodon.social)

A couple of friends of mine have recently been experimenting with mentioning CALLIGRAPHY PENS a lot around their laptops with browsers open on Facebook.

They don't talk about this otherwise, in any form or medium. Sure enough, they're getting calligraphy related FB adverts now.

There's no way big ad-based companies aren't helping themselves to data from your mic. Your phone and laptop are listening devices. For most of us, this will never have serious ramifications, but still, act accordingly.

The Conservatives have an app for their conference, and it lets you log in with just an email address - no pw, no verification email, nothing. Just "Welcome Mr. Gove!"

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove's profiles have of course been trashed already, and the phone numbers made public.

https://twitter.com/DawnHFoster/status/1046022868251873280

Impostor syndrome is just capitalism leaving the body

@Gargron my experience of setting up an enormously successful hackspace was a load of middle class people saying "we don't need a code of conduct, we're all good people here" then almost immediately getting their asses kicked by an unexpected sage spaces sitatuation that had really serious ramifications for several people.

Encouraging thing in late 2017:

Here and there I'm seeing middle aged and older white guys, with long histories in their respective industries, saying things like "the economy is rigged" and "we should get rid of the banks".

It's not just sour grapes. Some of them are on the comfortable side of capitalism and recognise it's fucking everyone over.

Nearly everyone I meet under 25 nowadays discusses anti-capitalist stuff as an everyday thing.

Also started meeting researchers who are busy dismantling neoliberalism (and ones who couldn't do that in the 90's after everyone else started spunking over Francis Fukayama), and people in mid-level positions at non-commercial orgs who despise the myopic business-led policy agendas of the past few decades.

The present is pretty shit, but I'm immensely optimistic about the future.