302 posts tagged with power.
Displaying 51 through 100 of 302. Subscribe:
The day Zach Galifianakis saved Obamacare.
“ Obamanauts have a passion for office and state, a calling for power distilled of all impurities. Pfeiffer may have wanted to help Obama “achieve his place in history,” but his ultimate intention in the White House was to serve “not just my president but the presidency itself.” Even so, theirs is an agile sense of service that bends to more self-serving claims. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes says that after 9/11 he was so compelled by patriotism—and repelled by the New York left’s “preemptive protests against American military intervention” and “reflexive distrust of Bush”—that he made the trek uptown to talk to an Army recruiter under the Queensboro Bridge. After giving the matter some thought, he decided that army life wasn’t for him; he could better serve his country by joining a think tank in DC.” The memoirs of Barack Obama’s staffers, considered (Dissent)
Art For Libertarians
“I told him that this was the first time I’d been to an exhibition where the majority of the attendees vocally opposed public funding for the arts. He, too, believed that the NEA was a waste of money: given a finite budget, weren’t there many other social welfare programs that deserved the funding more than art? He paused for a moment, before admitting this was a straw-man: “I mean, we don’t think the government should be paying for those either.” Culture Worriers (The Baffler)
Narrative, Fiction and World-Building Reality
Ursula K. Le Guin's Revolutions - "Le Guin's work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living." [more inside]
This is how you make an entrance
Billy Porter offers a master class in making an entrance...a little Friday pick-me-up (literally)!
Clean baseload
A report by Helen Czerski, from EVs-and-more channel FullyCharged, who visits First Light Fusion in Oxford, UK - who are working with pulsed power fusion. They give her a quick demonstration - starting with a children's xylophone but becoming a lot louder.
“The hillbillies are a rich seam of grant money“
“Depopulation, vocational training, growth centers: these kinds of schemes might have made sense to a handful of glassy-eyed bureaucrats, but as you can imagine, they didn’t go over well with the people who still lived in dying hollers and towns. In 1974, Whitesburg’s Mountain Eagle newspaper spoke with a former coal miner in Hazard, Kentucky, “wheezing with black lung but denied disability compensation,” who explained that a local ARC bureaucrat had suggested he retrain as an elevator operator. The miner was confused about how this would work: Hazard had only one building with an elevator, “but the damn thing is push button.” The anecdote was a perfect illustration of how disconnected the commission was from the region they were supposed to be helping.” Hollowed Out, against the sham revitalization of Appalachia (The Baffler)
The Secret Sources of Populism
The West’s understanding of globalization and interdependence is increasingly outdated. It imagines a global system in which Western countries radiate their influence all over the world but influence is never reflected back at them. Yet the rebalance of economic and political power has made that idea obsolete. And the phenomenon of populism in Europe and the United States is showing why.
Your Data, Your Money, Your Laws
Your data could be at the centre of the fight against big tech (NYT) - "Furman, a Harvard professor advising the British government on tech regulation, said that rather than relying on antitrust law alone, countries should create a dedicated regulator for the tech industry, to match those covering the banking, health and transportation sectors of the economy. He said a watchdog with expertise in the field could better review a company's behavior and use of data on a case-by-case basis." [more inside]
The Hot Mess of Hawai‘i’s Renewable Power Push
Can the small Hawaiian island of Moloka‘i and its utility get along well enough to teach the rest of the world how to get off fossil-fueled electricity? [more inside]
Technology, Law and Political Economy for Humans
How China Is Planning to Rank 1.3 Billion People - "Yet educated, urban Chinese take a positive view, seeing social credit systems as a means to promote honesty in society and the economy rather than a privacy violation, according to a poll by Mercator Institute for China Studies."[1] [more inside]
Common Wealth and Collective Power
Bernie Sanders' plan to empower workers could revolutionise Britain's economy (among others') - "Giving employees a stake in firms would reshape power: this could be the start of a transatlantic challenge to neoliberalism." [more inside]
Peripheral Belters or Retooling Finance and Tech for Everyone's Benefit
Going to Space to Benefit Earth - "Bezos then went on to discuss his plan to ship humans off of the best planet in the solar system and send them to live in floating cylinders in space." [more inside]
Killing Progressivism In The Crib
“All that time with McConnell did give Homans one special insight: McConnell hasn’t just “broken” the Senate by smashing its norms, or by making it dysfunctional. He’s essentially worked to make it irrelevant. For the foreseeable future, America’s regulatory policy will be written by the judiciary. Its ability to prosecute white-collar crime and bribery, to levy taxes, and create social welfare programs—all of these powers will be stripped from the Senate and put in the hands of the men (it’s almost all men) McConnell has placed on the courts. But he’ll probably go to his grave chuckling that Harry Reid started it, and get his name on that damn building too. America doesn’t really remember why it hated its political villains for very long, especially when they win.” Nihilist In Chief: The Banal, Evil, All-Destructive Reign Of Mitch McConnell [more inside]
What Are We Going To Do About The State?
“A directly democratic organizing model not only transforms the way that the workplace functions from a top-down autocracy to a collectivized movement of all workers, but also shows a clear example of how direct democracy can function. This example presents a model that can expand outward from the workplace into the rest of society. As a result, basic confrontation with the bosses, as a form of social struggle, can lead into the functioning of a new social order.” Ready to Fight: Developing a 21st Century Community Syndicalism “Unless we actually run candidates in city council elections, we are not dealing with power. And to live in fear that power might “corrupt” not only ignores the many cases where it did not corrupt; it ignores the need to gain power. Theater, street events, and other photogenic escapades merely play at politics rather than engage in it.” Thoughts on Libertarian Municipalism By Murray Bookchin “...it is important to recognize that no adequate theory of the capitalist state can focus on the national level alone. “The” state must be analyzed in terms of rivalry among *many* states. Precisely because it is organized “as nationality,” the capitalist nation-state expresses an antagonistic logic toward other states.” Should Socialists Want To Keep The State?
No Heat. No Power. No Accountability.
“ACCOUNTS FROM INCARCERATED people, their family members, and lawyers sketch a picture of widespread protests at the Sunset Park detention facility. People across multiple housing units undertook coordinated acts of nonviolent disobedience and at least three hunger strikes. Retaliation by Metropolitan Detention Center staff ranged from pepper spray and solitary confinement to shutting off toilets across entire units. All told, men on at least four housing units inside the jail say they took part in some sort of collective protest of their conditions. In each instance, they say their actions were met with official retaliation.” Locked inside a freezing federal jail they united to protest thier conditions - only to face reprisals An account of the Brooklyn MDC protests.
Renewable Energy To Remodel World Dominance Patterns
This Report analyzes the geopolitical implications of the global energy transformation driven by renewables. It is the culmination of ten months’ deliberations by the Commission, involving four meetings held in Berlin, Oslo, Reykjavik and Abu Dhabi respectively, as well as consultations with business leaders, academics and policy thinkers. It is informed by a number of background papers drafted by experts in the fields of energy, security and geopolitics. [via CleanTechnica + bonus]
The Hard Border And The Forever War
“And, in the intervening decade since that photo was taken, there hasn’t been a holiday season in which the United States was not at war. This is a fact so utterly banal that it barely warrants mention anymore. When that photo was taken, we’d been at war in Afghanistan for almost as long as the Soviet Union was.” Deployed for the holidays: Troops at the border missed Thanksgiving to carry out an ill-defined and unjustifiable mission. They weren’t alone. (Outline)
When will there be enough women in Congress? When there are 535
Why Aren't U.S. Workers Working? - "Labor force participation among U.S. men and women ages 25 to 54 has been declining for nearly 20 years, a stark contrast with rising participation in Canada over this period. Three-fourths of the difference between the two countries can be explained by the growing gap in labor force attachment of women. A key factor is the extensive parental leave policies in Canada. If the United States could reverse the trend in participation of prime-age women to match Canada, it would see 5 million additional prime-age workers join the labor force." [more inside]
Natalie Portman delivers a steely speech in the age of Time's Up
- Natalie Portman's Step-by-Step Guide to Toppling the Patriarchy
- The actor's address to Variety's Women of Power event borrows from classical techniques
- Natalie Portman: Voice of Light
“Mothers, moreover, were the typical organizers of rent strikes.”
“Starting from scattered clues left by Marx and his successors, above all Rosa Luxemburg, this essay outlines a theory of class formation and socialist hegemony in consonance with the historical, revolutionary experience of the working class’s actual lives and ideas. The basic thesis is that “agency” in the last instance is conditioned by the development of the productive forces but activated by the convergence (or “overdeterminations”) of political, economic, and cultural struggles.” Old Gods, New Enigmas: as production becomes more abstract and society more alienated, what can we learn about building class consciousness from the movements of the past? (Catalyst)
When Asian Women Are Harassed for Marrying Non-Asian Men
The men who harass me know three things: I’m Chinese-American, my husband is white, and our son is multiracial. You hate Asian men, they insist; you hate your own child. You hate yourself. [more inside]
Conspiracy Theories Replace Systemic Understanding Of Oppresion
“Illuminati theory helps oppressed people to explain our experiences in the hood. Society throws horrible stuff in our faces: our family members get locked up for bullshit. Our friends kill each other over beefs, money or turf. Our future is full of dead-end jobs that don’t pay shit. We struggle to pay bills while others live in luxury. On TV, we see people all over the world dying in poverty, even though we live in the most materially abundant society in history. Most people act like none of these terrible things are happening. Why does this occur? We start looking for answers, and Illuminati theory provides one.
We believe Illuminati theory is wrong, and we wrote this pamphlet to offer a different answer. “ How to Overthrow the Illuminati: How conspiracy theories thrived in the aftermath of the Black Power movements and how to combat them.
We believe Illuminati theory is wrong, and we wrote this pamphlet to offer a different answer. “ How to Overthrow the Illuminati: How conspiracy theories thrived in the aftermath of the Black Power movements and how to combat them.
Humanism
You Might Have Earned It, But Don't Forget That Your Wealth Came from Society - "The distribution of that wealth doesn't rest on markets or on social perceptions of who deserves what but on the ability of the powerful to use their power to retain whatever of the value society generates that they can." (via) [more inside]
Cycling at 183.93 miles per hour
Denise Korenek just set a 'paced bicycle land speed record' - essentially cycling behind a vehicle and using the drafting (slip-streaming) to achieve very high speeds.
#NordicModelforDummies
Gary Shteyngart's View From Hedge Fund Land - "I grew up in a socialist country—not Danish-style socialist, but idiot-style socialist in the Soviet Union. That doesn't work. Venezuela doesn't work, either. There has to be a compromise. But it has to be capitalism with humane characteristics. And it works! Certain components of it are always there; there're always strong unions, for example. There's always a strong social sector, in terms of free education and free health care. These are not poor societies. I know the right-wing media is going bananas with it and trying to smear all of these things, but those things all work. I'm not a socialist; I think making money is fine, and there are certain incentives. But people have to recognize that, beyond a certain amount, there will be no more pleasure derived from that money, other than keeping a scorecard, the same way you keep a scorecard in a sport. But life isn't a sport; there are people whose lives are impacted by your game-playing." [more inside]
What Socialism Looks Like in 2018
Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom - "Minimal government doesn't remove power from our lives." (via) [more inside]
Pump it up
The trouble with solar power generator is that it's hard to store electricity. Batteries are expensive. Flywheels are cool but expensive and have undesirable failure modes. Near San Diego, water authority officials want to create a pumped hydro storage facility that could store up to 500 MW. But what if you don't already have a huge reservoir? A Swiss startup wants to use a crane to lift concrete blocks as a storage mechanism.
Public Squares or Private Premises
Alex Jones, the First Amendment, and the Digital Public Square - "How should we challenge hate-mongering in the age of social media?" [more inside]
Sectarianism that is fuelled by the very act of being vocally sectarian
“When radicals attack each other in the game of good politics, it is due at least in part to the fact that this is a place where people can exercise some power. Even if one is unable to challenge capitalism and other oppressive structures, even if one is unable to participate in the creation of alternative forms of life, one can always attack others for their complicity, and tell oneself that these attacks are radical in and of themselves.” The stifling air of rigid radicalism, an excerpt from Joyful Militancy.
Getting Power And Keeping It
“Faris is arguing that unless the progressive majority finally learns to emulate the energy and the fighting style of the Republicans, American democracy could disappear altogether within our own lifetimes.” Battle Hymn Of The Democrats: why it’s time for liberals to fight dirty. (The Guardian) “There are some very good ideas in It’s Time to Fight Dirty, but because Faris doesn’t believe that a good policy creates its own constituency, he ends up preferring complicated technocratic solutions like eight Californias, a rotating Supreme Court or fines for non-voters just to get around the problem that he assumes is a permanent feature of American life: that rural states will always be Republican. The recent red state uprisings like the teachers’ strike leave me unconvinced of that argument.” Review of ‘It’s Time To Fight Dirty’ (Midwest Socialist) Faris interviewed about his book and the things Democrats could do once in power on Zero Hour (41:00) Chapo Trap House (1:10:00)
2012: End Of World Or Just Death of America's Ego, c/o Trump?
Old, violent, dominant ideologies sense that their demise is coming and therefore need to fight this hard in response. What we are seeing is the oppressive identity of America crying out in pain because of the damage that our awareness has done to it.[more inside]
“...a moral pretext for what is really just imaginative pleasure.”
Empathy Machines: Fellow feeling as a technologically mediated experience by Olivia Rosane “The narrative about the power of literature, like the current approach to VR, makes historical change not a matter of the resistance efforts of the oppressed and their allies but of relatively privileged people speaking to other relatively privileged people to spark a paternalistic response. [...] By focusing on bringing the experiences of the marginalized to elites, VR developers implicitly endorse a system in which a small number of people retain outsize power.”
Greatest Story Ever Told, Greatest Trick Ever Pulled
Authority - "We construct authority. How we construct it is among the most important social, ethical, and technological problems we face." [more inside]
HAU
HAU is dead, long live OA initiatives
Open Secrets: On Power and Publication
chronology
#hautalk
meaning and pronunciation
Open Secrets: On Power and Publication
chronology
#hautalk
meaning and pronunciation
#ChurchToo
The fact that there are abusive leaders in the evangelical church is utterly, unremarkably unsurprising. Where there are men in power, there will be men abusing it. What separates #ChurchToo from #MeToo are the power dynamics (at the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality) entrenched in evangelical purity culture, a sex-obsessed, white Christian moralism. [more inside]
Will Smith on how he landed The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
A short video of Smith telling how he got a huge break after his career looked done. (link to a twitter video from @onlyhiphopfacts) [more inside]
Like It Or Not, We’re Not Alone
“The purpose of a truly left policy is to imagine that something can be done, that ills we view as incurable can in fact be cured, and that evils we view as perennial can be eradicated.” Fellow Travellers is a new project of several foreign policy and international relations-oriented writers and academics to promote left foreign policy discussion. Opening essays: “A Case For Transational Justice” on the purpose of properly dealing with the crimes of past administrations - “Reckoning With The Imperial We” what’s to be done with the not quite states of America? - “The Skripal Poisonings and the Chance To Build A Left Foreign Policy” how to deal with global olgliachs one seized asset at a time.
How to Lose Your Job From Sexual Harassment in 33 Easy Steps
"Ignore this comment and the other comments, questions, and emails that follow about how his marriage might be breaking up, and would he be a hot commodity on the dating market..." "Respond in the affirmative, and you’ve prostituted yourself. Respond negatively, do not respond at all, or get a lawyer involved, and there goes your career." [more inside]
Towards an Empathic Civilization
The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy - "Where do we go from here? In this feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new economic system." (previously) [more inside]
The problem of female speechlessness — my own, my friends’, my mother’s,
The secret female empowerment school known as The Academy "Urbaniak teaches what she calls “verbal martial arts,” practical techniques designed to interrupt that telltale moment of frozenness described with bafflement and shame by nearly everyone who experiences sexual assault, including the president’s alleged victims."
Something broke, is breaking still
The use of sexual frustration and weaponized misogyny in the radicalization of young men is consistent across ideologies, and the entitlement that underlies it is not exclusive to fascist movements. - The Consent of the (Un)governed, Laurie Penny on #metoo, neoliberalism, the alt-right and the breaking point the world finds itself at today.
City state island nation
Reports of its death were greatly exaggerated, and the end-of-the-nation-state theory itself died at the turn of the millennium. But now it’s back, and this time it might be right.
The Taylor Compressor
The Taylor Compressor relies solely on the energy inherent in falling water. It is a machine that uses no moving parts, does not require any fuel to operate, and is completely self perpetuating as long as there’s an adequate supply of water. The hydraulic compressor at Victoria was able to supply enough compressed air to run the entire operation, including the hoists, rock crushers, drills, and even the mine’s short line railroad.
I was the wealthiest, most powerful person Brown knew, and I had $67
Teaching white students showed me the difference between power and privilege. Southern black boys like me were more likely to end up incarcerated than working beside white faculty at so-called elite liberal arts colleges. [more inside]
In a dark time, the eye begins to see
Anonymous asked: What's your take on non-binary/agender gender identities?A brief piece on power, reason, art, love, and the body. By George Lazenby. [more inside]
I think those identities represent one of the most important realizations it’s possible for a person to have.
I’ll tell you a story...
The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea
Close to 200 trillion watts of kinetic energy lurk in the seas: more than enough to power the planet, if we could somehow extract it all.
The most powerful woman, and one of the most powerful people, in sports.
... nothing mattered more to Jeanie Buss than the family business — than her father’s legacy. [...]
She is the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, as her late father wished. Four months ago, she fired her brother and also the team’s 17-year general manager on the same day, and installed trusted friend Earvin “Magic” Johnson as president of basketball operations. Then she prevailed in an ugly court battle with her two older brothers that confirmed she will run the Lakers for the rest of her life. ~ From roller hockey to the Lakers: How Jeanie Buss became the most powerful woman in sports By Tania Ganguli, LA Times
Bitcoin has not in any sense eliminated human politics
"It can enforce contracts, prevent double spending, and cap the size of the money pool all without participants having to cede power to any particular third party who might abuse the power. No rent-seeking, no abuses of power, no politics — blockchain technologies can be used to create “math-based money” and “unstoppable” contracts that are enforced with the impartiality of a machine instead of the imperfect and capricious human bureaucracy of a state or a bank. ... Unfortunately this turns out to be a naive understanding of blockchain."
“It’s no better since Anita Hill because we don’t have power.”
In Cosby Trial, Treatment of Women by Powerful Men Has Its Day in Court [The New York Times] [Descriptions of Sexual Abuse/Assault] “It’s a familiar and discomforting spectacle: A woman who alleges sexual assault is also put on trial. She is grilled on the witness stand about why she continued to speak with a famous man she now charges with abuse, someone who had the power to shape her future. The man has to defend himself against the possibility of false accusations, and so it’s open season on a woman’s credibility. Andrea Constand’s two days at the center of the Bill Cosby trial captured the dynamics that make sexual assault cases so polarizing and so resonant. Her testimony, picked over by Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, occurred at a cultural moment when accusations of sexual assault or harassment have rocked a media empire, a presidential campaign, Silicon Valley start-ups and countless college campuses.” [more inside]
Occupiers! Stop Using Consensus!
Consensus process (the idea that a group must strictly adhere to a protocol where all decisions are unanimous) is the absolute worst idea that has ever been introduced to the activist community.