Francis 🇾🇪 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @francis@greenplenty.social

Been listening to @pluralistic 's Little Brother trilogy. Super fun! I hadn't realized it was YA fiction ahead of time, so not my usual genre, but it's still quite fun and a great way to pass the time on long road trips. (I'm about half way through book two.)

Besides the plot, the main character/narrator dives into explanations of things like public/private key cryptography, history of the internet, Alan Turing and Enigma, the founding of EFF, copyright and trademark law and lots of other interesting topics. (I'm guessing that more than a few of the events are autobiographical.)

I'm having a lot of fun with it. Highly recommended. Looking forward to upcoming (adult fiction) book Red Team Blues.

I'll add: people don't have to be likable or nice to you or grateful, to deserve food, housing, kindness and care (including healthcare)

There is no such thing as "undeserving poor".

Every poor person deserves help and respect; if you have a mental file or image of people who are undeserving of either, you need to look at yourself.

Poverty ain't a moral failure.

Quote from article: Once the Nazis took power they banned books, outlawed drag shows and homosexuality, changed school curricula to remove mention of their atrocities in WWI, and rewrote election laws so they’d never again lose an election.

My thoughts: A whole bunch of people, myself included, started pointing out parallels between the Trump-era GOP and the Nazis well before he was elected. We were accused of employing hyperbole, and told to "give him a chance."

Well, just call me Cassandra ... because here we are.

Just. Like. I. Said. We. Would. Be.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/whats-behind-the-gops-war-against?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Human rights are universal. It’s not for this Government to pick and choose who does and doesn’t deserve them
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/1aef6730-deef-11ed-a0a8-657f9e54fc6a?shareToken=43c2d6a9994fcb2d6d982c121c2d64e9

This is Ralph Yarl’s official Go Fund Me page. Please donate. Thank you.

https://gofund.me/b68601b2

#JusticeForRalphYarl #RalphYarl #BlackMastodon #Mastodon #usa #AndrewLester

A note on a key chapter of neoliberal theology:

'The Tragedy of the Commons thesis has been thoroughly debunked by Nobel prize winning development economist Elinor Ostrom and countless other researchers and practitioners; they have shown that, in fact, most commons like grazing lands and water supply are not open access regimes but managed very successfully through community institutions and local access rules.'
@pvonhellermannn

https://medium.com/@p.vonhellermann/the-tragedy-of-the-non-commons-4bfad884cdbe

You no longer have to imagine what a 'free economy' looks like, general strikes, CoL, corruption, hatred of immigrants, denial of citizens FOM, unelected PM's, shows the UK that it's anti-governance tactics have eviscerated democracy and equality, the social contract in tatters.

It’s very, very strange to be surrounded by people everywhere slowly signing up for fascism. Especially when they think of themselves as “normal”, liberal / progressive… the good people. And yet, they’ve fallen for propaganda. Slowly agreed to value tiny personal convenience over everyone else’s basic human rights. They’ve jettisoned reality. Rejected science and facts. Bought into extreme selfishness. They proudly post photos of themselves causing harm. And push others to do the same. W.T.F.