In which @ntnsndr, in conversation with David Bollier – https://overcast.fm/+YVzymNQfY – does that thing where someone points out a dynamic that should be obvious, but it needs that someone to point it out to you:
Namely, that the client-server model of online infrastructure is inherently antithetical to democratic governance.
In our online lives, “we are in some sense being trained *out of* the democratic practices that have been so essential to practices of political democracies”
“in the 4 years of the [Balkan] war, the international community stood by as Bosnian Muslims were decimated. But these were, primarily, acts of omission. The West did not arm Republika Srpska with its best bombs. Bill Clinton did not fly in to hug Milošević. The slaughter was not accompanied by the constant refrain ‘the Serbian nationalists have the right to defend themselves’.
@liztai it looks like a container ship? Their weight is off the scale. And I imagine the bridge pillars are engineered for downward stress but very much not massive sideways stress
That screenshot is from a Twitter account I ran for the Portsmouth #activetravel campaign, Pompey Street Space, back in 2020 when, with COVID knocking us all sideways, the prospects for change were tantalising.
At the time, Grant Shapps and Robert Jenrick of all people, were tentative cheerleaders for emergency transport policies.
It wasn’t to be, of course. They would revert to being exactly who they have always been.
As a UK election nears (ish), and Tories scramble to be “on the side of drivers”, a reminder that people don’t know what’s good for them ahead of positive change, but then are convinced after the fact that they did know all along
slavery abolitionists were ‘extremist’, suffragettes were ‘extremist’, the trade union movement was ‘extremist’, civil rights campaigners were ‘extremist’, anti-apartheid activists were ‘extremist’
@aral@cferdinandi if countries build decades of foreign policy (in the UK’s case over a century) on doing all kinds of fkery to keep the economic windpipe to an energy jackpot open, while saying it’s *only* about something else, eventually the cognitive dissonance fractures everything https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111754210396689587
January is nearly at a close but it’s not too late to plug @kathhayhoe’s 3 resolutions for 2024:
1. Quoting Ed Maibach: “Discuss your support for climate solutions more frequently with your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Doing so is good for you, them, and the climate.” 💬
#climateDiary We’ve constructed a culture which venerates something we’ve made up – money – and ignores something we’re made of – carbon.
Which makes us less intelligent than frogs.
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“As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.”
Cycling, designing, coding, over-thinking. Bit sweary.Trying not to be po-faced in the face of so much po💩A JS trying to make his JS, CSS and HTML lean and kind.“The times are urgent. Let’s slow down.”—Bayo Akomolafe