Notices by Michael Halila 🏳️‍⚧️ (mhalila@mastodontti.fi), page 2

If you look at Trump's coup attempt, and the way the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are behaving, I don't know how you see this as anything other than a concerted effort to impose minority rule. Such democracy as the US has is too much for these people, and they're working determinedly to scrap it.

The US Supreme Court isn't really a court of law any more, in the sense that a European would think of one. The closest equivalent that I can think of is Iran's Guardian Council: a theocratic body with veto powers over basically all functions of government, dedicated to maintaining religious supremacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Council

Your reminder that Israel is deliberately starving over two million people in Gaza. This is a horrifying, inhuman atrocity, a war crime being openly carried out in front of our very eyes. They are ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip.

"Never again" is right now. And all our governments and leaders are standing by, watching two million people starve to death, and inviting the war criminals to the Eurovision Song Contest. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/24/israel-reportedly-blocking-un-food-aid-to-northern-gaza-despite-high-famine-risk

"All billionaires under 30 have inherited their wealth, research finds"

Of course they have. We're creating a new hereditary elite, a group of oligarchs who've done absolutely nothing to earn a single dime of their wealth. Exactly like the nobility used to be.

Why do we let them hoard these fortunes? It's ridiculous. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/03/all-billionaires-under-30-have-inherited-their-wealth-research-finds

Those of you who follow this kind of thing may recall that a few months ago, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested the pro-Palestine protests were being financed and run by Russia, and said the FBI should investigate them.

Neoliberalism and political power are a hell of a drug. Do enough of them, and you can no longer understand that some people might actually care about what happens to other people. No, it has to somehow be a sinister foreign plot. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/29/pelosi-condemned-pro-palestinian-russia-ties

Today in things you literally cannot make up: a senior Democrat congressman calls protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza "leftwing fascists" and demands their arrest.

Is it any wonder Trump is winning, when both parties are using his rhetoric and making his arguments? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/25/israel-gaza-ceasefire-adam-smith

"Although the UK is in recession, and GDP per head has been steadily falling through last year, this is not a typical recession which involves lack of aggregate demand, but one caused by sharp cuts to real incomes following higher energy and food prices, as well as labour shortages caused in part by an increasingly sick workforce following Conservative mismanagement of the NHS and Covid pandemic."

The UK is in a recession caused by austerity and right-wing incompetence. https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/03/detoxifying-government-debt-part-4.html

This is where we're headed as well. Austerity doesn't actually create any real economic growth, but rather depresses the whole economy as the people suffering from it spend less. So the massive cuts our far-right government is planning will probably push us further toward a recession.

Then when the next election comes around, the media will panic about the deficit because we're in a recession, and re-elect the arsonists to put out the fire.

@AnarchoNinaWrites I mean they are definitely telling us, loud and clear, exactly who they are. I could swear I've heard something about what not to do when you're in a hole, but what do I know.

@AnarchoNinaWrites safing my space by listening to minorities, but you know, only real minorities, not the fake ones. I am definitely very progressive.

Look, it's simple. Carbon credits are a scam and have always been a scam.

The atmosphere doesn't care about our accounting tricks. Anyone who says that we can pump more greenhouse gases and pollutants into the air, but it'll be fine because we'll "compensate" for it, is lying.

What we need everyone to understand next is that this is why "net zero" is also a hoax. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-credit-speculators-could-lose-billions-as-offsets-deemed-worthless-aoe

@AnarchoNinaWrites I lost interest in something like 90% of discussions on politics when I realized they're actually people writing fan fiction about politics and enforcing standards of propriety. So many objections, like the ones you quoted, boil down to nothing except "this is not a proper way to speak".

Several people have replied to this post without reading it, and at least two have started mansplaining what I said to me. And you people said this platform couldn't replace Twitter!

"AI is going to take your job!"

Like hell it is. Try:

"A super-rich capitalist has invested billions of dollars into replacing human creative work with a shitty computer program, so he can pocket more of the profits."

When you stop intentionally obscuring who is doing things and who is benefiting from them, the world starts looking very different indeed.

What they're trying to sell to us is the idea that somehow, this technology just appeared on its own, and now we have to adjust to it. A notion of technology as an inevitable force of nature.

A large portion of the world's journalists are helping them pull the scam off by constantly writing about technology as if it just shows up and does things on its own. As if people weren't constantly making choices on how to develop and deploy it.

The whole "AI", i.e. content generator, spectacle is such a perfect example of why the idea that technology is neutral is such garbage.

There are so many damn things we could be doing with all this processing power and money, and what the people making the decisions are choosing to do is line their own pockets and destroy the livelihoods of the people they call "creatives". Stealing other people's work and repackaging it as computer-generated swill. The stupidity of it is infuriating.

Twelve years ago today, a Norwegian neo-nazi murdered 77 people in Oslo and Utøya. His youngest victim was 14 years old.

A month ago, one of the racist bloggers he cited as an inspiration was elected speaker of the parliament of Finland. His party is in government.

In the years since the massacre, we've embraced its ideology.

Last week, Finnish police announced they're holding four neo-nazis who were 3D-printing firearms in order to start a "race war".

We saw Utøya, and decided we want more.

If people now think Substack is good because the twitter idiot is pissed at them, can I remind everyone that one of the keystones of the Substack business model is transphobia? They're a garbage company who have been actively working for years to create the transphobic moral panic currently engulfing the US. https://gen.medium.com/substack-is-not-a-neutral-platform-8fc5bdf8e5f2

The great thing about having a culture war that's based on nothing except the deranged tantrums of conservative men is that absolutely anything can be roped into it. Like remote work.

I didn't know I work for several "woke" employers, but here we are. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/21/jacob-rees-mogg-alan-sugar-daily-mail-home-working-woke

Can we also take a moment to note that "woke", as used here, was originally a Black American term for being aware of systemic racism, and in just a few years, the US right turned it into a totally content-free sneer? And the entire English-speaking media basically just ran with it, to the extent that you now hear it used in _Finnish_?

Because that's white supremacy for you. Criticism, even awareness, of the racist power structure will not be tolerated.