Strypey @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

"Our collective objective should be, to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offence, or the disadvantage of anyone."
- Buckminster Fuller

#Introduction career activist and professional volunteer from Aotearoa (NZ). Co-founder of numerous community projects, including a community newspaper, #CoWorking space, #MicroRadio station, #SocialCentre, the Aotearoa sections of #Indymedia and #CreativeCommons, and the Aotearoa Permaculture Network. These days, I publish long-form blogs at #Disintermedia. I'd love to hear from you about common interests, my contact info and more about my project history is here:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/danyl-strype

"Rents charged at such rates – far beyond the costs of capital and maintenance – are, in these circumstances, a form of private taxation, levied by the rich on the poor. The penalty for failing to pay this tax is arguably greater than the penalty for failing to pay taxes owed to the state: eviction and homelessness. People say “I work for Tesco” or “I work for Deliveroo”, but the reality for many is that they work for their landlord."
- #GeorgeMonbiot
https://www.monbiot.com/2019/07/19/private-taxation/

"... if we don’t close the widening gap between the rich and the poor [with reform], history tells us there will be violence and revolution."
- #BryanBruce
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/07/24/guest-blog-bryan-bruce-capitalism-in-the-21st-century/

Getting on with either of these sounds better than letting capitalists (eg Thiel) continue to mobilize alienated working class youth in neo-fascist movements, in a (probably) futile attempt to hold the current state of inequality in place. But my preferred alternative to all three would be nonviolent revolution.

Thanks to @mlemweb for the link.

"[#RomeReborn's] collaborative origins, earlier authors, and the public funding that supported the preliminary models are largely glossed over on the product’s website."
https://hyperallergic.com/480239/a-virtual-reality-app-that-reconstructs-ancient-rome-may-have-exploited-its-developers/

Yet another example of the rampant privatization of knowledge commons.

King #GNU (coz it's good to be the king! ;)
https://invidio.us/watch?v=MSv7NbfbtU8

... except that you have to pay Springer (US?)$8 to read it there. Or look it up on #SciHub ...

Here's the paper Benesch is commenting on, published in #Nature by Johnson et al:
'Hidden resilience and adaptive dynamics of the global online hate ecology'
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1494-7

“The authors have tried to discover the consequences of deleting posts or accounts, which is itself a contribution, since it is too often assumed that deletion is the most effective response to bad content—without evidence.”
- #SusanBenesch, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, founder and director of the Dangerous Speech Project.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-model-online-hate-networks-in-effort-to-battle-them/

Making indoor environments #smokefree is a no-brainer, because of the way smoking inside exposes other people to trapped second-hand smoke. But that argument doesn't really apply outside, nor does it apply to vaping (when the emission really is vapour, not smoke). When indoor smoking is banned, people can pop outside to smoke. But banning smoking *and* vaping in outdoor public places excludes people addicted to smoking from using them. Is this really justified by the public health benefits?

I've never smoked tobacco, and I've always been an enthusiastic supporter of banning smoking in indoor public places, including bars and restaurents (remember "non-smoking" sections on planes!?!). But I don't support moves in Aotearoa towards banning smoking and vaping in public places:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/382398/town-goes-smoke-free-on-public-property-in-new-zealand-first

I will admit the article they are discussing is badly referenced. The #ScientificAmerican editors could have improved it significantly by pointing all the links to the actual reports and studies the author mentions (ideally by DOI), rather than to other articles that mention them. The Guardian article she links to for the inter-academy report is just as badly referenced, it only links to the front page of the publishing organization's website, not the report that is the focus of the article.

The denial is strong. It doesn't matter how much evidence you show some people that industrial agriculture is unsustainable, produces poor quality food-like products, poisons and kills soil biota and pollinators, contributes to climate change, *and* causes more food waste and shortages than it fixes. They are determined to believe that corporate and industrial = science, and the distributed ownership and regenerative methods of systems like permaculture = anti-science:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20752552

We need build hundreds of solar furnaces, as close as possible to where the most steel is needed. Then we can stop all use of coal for smelting steel, preventing the emission of huge volumes of C02 and other pollutants:
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2019/08/climate-change-say-no-to-carbon-cheats.html

"This [global 19th-century] “revolution”, in [Ussama] Makdisi’s words – and it’s good to use the word in the non-violent sense – 'introduced the profoundly important and historic principle of political equality among citizens, many of whom had been discriminated against or classified as inferior in centuries past.' These included Jews in Europe, blacks in the United States, and non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire."
- #RobertFisk
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/sectarianism-history-middle-east-religion-muslims-christian-a9056136.html

A Parliamentary Budget Office seems like a great way to deepen the debate over the bang vs. buck of different policies aimed at similar goals. With the bonus that it will be harder for parties to cynically write off their opponents policies as "too expensive" without offering their own costed alternatives for comparison by voters, political journalists, researchers etc.

Thanks once again to #IdiotSavant's dogged watchdog blogging (try saying that three times fast) on #NZ politics, I just learned the government has announced "plans for a Parliamentary Budget Office to allow opposition parties to get an independent costing of their policies."
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-sensible-idea.html

Thanks to @cjd for the link.
https://mastodon.social/@cjd/102643888382568772

"#Prohibition is a pesticide with perverse effects; ritual reforestation is a long-term solution [to drug abuse]."
- #SarahPerry, author of 'Every Cradle is a Grave'
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/12/03/an-ecology-of-beauty-and-strong-drink/

Bang on.

#MakeItLegal