Notices by Bruno Dias (bruno@cybre.space)

A consistent problem I have with post-apocalyptic fiction, particularly the Walking Dead, is the view of a world where everyone is amoral and out for themselves. That's not a very good description of how people actually behave in crises but it is a good description of normative behavior under capitalism.

Hey Mastodon: Reply to this toot with a reason you have for being hopeful.

I think the ethos and aesthetics of modern computing - with their rigid emphasis on the smooth, the frictionless, the consistent, the compatible, the clean; with their reification of the visual over the textual and of consumption over production, etc, are super sterile and fucked up. At the same time, nostalgia is a trap. we need a future-focused aesthetics of computing at the local and personal level that isn't ruled by corporate exploitation.

The news from Virginia is really good! It's encouraging to see that not everything is so completely fucked that victories for decency can't be won, and Danica Roen's win is a particularly sweet cherry on top of the whole thing. Hopefully people can meaningfully pressure the new dem representatives to push them towrads effective political action, like in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table

To complain about the shortcomings of the infrastructure we have, and devise perfect alternatives, is to miss the basic reality that the process of figuring out what the infrastructure must look like is part of the process of building the infrastructure; that everything gets manufactured to fulfill an immediate need.

This was, immediately and entirely, oversimplified into "Facebook keeps people from talking/hearing people who disagree with them." This is not what Facebook does! What Facebook does is feed people the content that will maximize engagement and keep people hooked on Facebook specifically. It will avoid, for example, giving you too much content you might like from a single source because you might leapfrog Facebook and just start reading their website instead.