@PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social

Replying to

We really need to recognize that kids are a marginalized group of vulnerable people who are, as a class, oppressed by adults, as a class. I think there's really no shorthand around it, we just need to subject anything that targets kids to a lot more scrutiny, in the same way we at least hypothetically scrutinize anything targeting a marginalized group to a greater degree. Adults who prey on children in the ways we recognize as predatory *and* adults who enforce systems of dominance and control to "protect" children are fundamentally similar, even though the latter often raises the spectre of the former as justification. Both are united by their wielding of power over children as a class. Nevermind that very often the former finds it much easier to prey on children because of the isolation and immiseration the latter subjects children to.

178

1

115

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 4w ago

Replying to

You can't class war your way out of a culture war, it doesn't work. It's just wishing that your opponent had picked a different battlefield than they actually did. The working class isn't mesmerized into racism by their material deprivation or whatever. People are invested in hierarchies and are motivated to defend them, even if those hierarchies intersect with ones they're on the losing side of. But! the capacity for non-fascists to be inculcated into the fascist society is very strongly effected by the strength of communities. You can't disarm MAGA by giving everyone universal healthcare, but the willingness of regular people to be anti-trans bathroom cops or to report their Black coworker as a sinister DEI hire are very connected to how secure people feel in their social and material life

22

0

11

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

Activists spend their whole lives in dangerous toil to make Nazis afraid to march openly. It's not the police or state intelligence or whatever else: it's antifascists. Antifascists infiltrate then, research them, identify them, counteract them, etc. Please for the love of everything good recognize that real people are fighting this fight and have been for decades.

164

11

100

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

A teen who sees a cock is probably fine, a teen who has been rendered basically incapable of seeing a cock is actually almost certainly living in a kind of waking nightmare under the heel of incredible surveillance, punishment, and control.

127

3

38

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

As a labor organizer I can't overstate how important the Americans with Disabilities Act is to organized labor. If you have ever gotten your job to cut you some slack because of a physical disability or injury, or a mental health issue, or a learning disability, the ADA is what gave you force of law even if you didn't know it. I've been able to save the jobs of quite a few workers because of the Reasonable Accommodation process of the ADA The ADA was passed because disparate affinity groups and organizations of disabled people fought tooth and nail to make it so. Activists lead by Patricia "the General" Wright played a hard inside game, lobbying to agencies and legislators and using as much formal electoral muscle as they could leverage, while more direct groups carried out demonstrations like the legendary Capitol Crawl, forcing lawmakers to directly confront them. Disabled people, as is so often the case with marginalized organizers, fought for everyone while fighting for themselves. It's true that very nearly all of us will be disabled at some point in our lives, but also the ADA is a lifeline and safeguard to dignity for every American throughout their life, no matter how temporary their disability. And so one of the tentpoles of US labor law was built by disabled activists struggling for a better world for all of us while demanding their rightful place in it. Happy Disability Pride Month, and thank a disability activist for fighting the good fight

122

2

116

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 4w ago

Replying to

It's not necessarily that strong communities are a perfect preventative against fascists ever getting power, but they do provide strong checks against the ability of fascists to take a role in all aspects of daily life. A society's ability to resist the individual level influence of fascism is greatly strengthened by the resilience of communities.

12

1

5

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 4w ago

I think falling into the science fiction beliefs about these LLM programs isn't good from any angle. Like, no, these things aren't going to Renraku Arcology all of us or turn into Skynet or whatever, and they're also not going to usher in Star Trek. They're just unimpressive incremental improvements (in some cases) of already existing chatbots and big data crunching programs. The novelty is that capitalists are weaponizing them to disenfranchise workers, that's kinda it.

10

0

5

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Farmers will continue to mostly stick by Trump because A) "farmers" in the American context means farm owners, not people who farm and B) what farmers wanted from Trump was to get rid of the anti-slavery reforms that Biden did to the H-2A visa system, and Trump did that. Biden oversaw the largest anti-slavery enforcement operations in something like a century and introduced a broad swathe of anti-slavery reforms to the H-2A system, a system that exists basically only to create slaves for US farmers which is why farmers hated Biden.

31

0

24

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

One would think the fact that America can't win wars would matter politically eventually

28

4

9

2

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

The US government's practice of warfare relies heavily on two concepts: special forces raids and ubiquitous aerial bombing. Those special forces raids amount mostly to poorly thought out campaigns of terrorism, while America is still desperately trying to win wars through air power which is literally the pipe dream of the dawn of aviation and has never worked. People often blame US political leaders for choosing bad wars and that's not untrue but it's definitely cope. The US military itself is pretty captured by fundamentally flawed ideas about war, and to be honest I think that US political leaders are as mislead by US military leaders as vice versa. This idea that the US military would win like crazy if only the dumb elected civilians would stop using the military wrong is bordering on Clean Wehrmacht levels of apologia. Like yeah if you need twenty dudes in a bunker killed at the low price of dozens of millions of dollars, the Pentagon is unbeatable. That's not warfare, that's money laundering with a modest body count.

20

0

6

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@bruce@darkmoon.social @PhoenixSerenity@beige.party @deirdresm@hachyderm.io US Nazis don't wear masks because they're ashamed: they wear masks because they rightfully fear antifascist response. Don't believe for a moment that the thing that holds these people in check is their own conscience.

32

1

11

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

People keep mocking Andrew Tate's arrestee outfit, but he was in the US and I think he was trying to respect our culture. He broke out the knee breeches and blouse so he could look like our most sacred child sex traffickers, the Founding Fathers.

It's a high degree of cultural literacy if anything

19

1

8

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

Some vacuous cretin came into my mentions to concern troll, so let me clear something up: Antifascist activists have kept our side of the bargain, while the shitlib electoralists have not. Antifascists successfully stymied every attempt to build a fighting US fascist street movement for more than a decade now. With full control over the federal government the US fascist movement still struggles to maintain any kind of confrontational street presence. ICE, which is straightforwardly the US blackshirts/SA, struggles to hold its own against protests and decentralized action. Patriot Front remains limited to furtively performing occasional publicity stunts. ICE officers fear their faces being uncovered because antifascists will and have identified them. But electoralists have failed to secure that front at all. You have lost a series of winnable elections pursuing indulgent strategies focused on performative right-wing liberal vice signaling and sacrificing large portions of your coalition you find distasteful. Your unwillingness to discipline the Democratic party has produced nothing but craven losers and corporate hacks that lack a crumb of pragmatism. They're unwilling or unable to pursue popular, common-sense center-left compromises, like universal healthcare and progressive taxation. They waste their political capital on frivolous projects about competing with the Republicans to be the most insanely racist about the border and immigration, and have destroyed their own prospects again and again by acting as concierges to the rich moocher class. You electoralists have failed, embarrassingly and at great length, and you have the gall to speak down to the sober pragmatists that have been actually successfully holding your flank this entire time. You resent that the activists you hate are the only people that have shown they can get results because it flies in the face of your ideological hangups, and shows you as the feckless cowards you are.

26

0

18

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

A major failure of US liberalism is a total blindness to enemies. Republicans routinely work hard to reduce the political power of their opposition, quite flagrantly: gerrymandering and the suppression of voters of color is an obvious one, but attacks on science and education also degrade important power bases for the Democrats, reducing the money and resources that can be marshalled for the Dems. Passing laws that make life difficult for queer people has the effect of making queer people move and degrading the resources of queer people, again degrading the power of a Dem aligned bloc.

Democrats could very well pursue some weird technocratic stuff that would be hard to recognize as attacks on enemy blocs by most Republicans, but would be very effective. End most farm subsidies, open up community-owned slaughterhouses, legalize direct sales from car manufacturers, regulate supplements into the ground and create massive civil liabilities for supplemental companies, start passing data privacy laws, etc etc. All of these target powerful Republican aligned blocs, blocs that back Republicans basically everywhere at every level, and puts worlds of hurt on them. These are already highly activated blocs, so you're not making news enemies: you're hurting the enemies you have. And this stuff hurts these enemies by protecting the people they're preying on!

15

3

11

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Unironically I do think LLMs are predicated on crimes against humanity in the sense that they are built on the pilfering and enclosure of common human knowledge. There are property right arguments that LLM companies have committed property crimes but frankly I don't care: I think more important is that LLMs have been produced through a process somewhere between ISIS blowing up ancient religious sites and the enclosure of common land. I would literally argue that LLM companies should be put before the Hague and prosecuted organizationally similar to military units charged with war crimes.

11

1

9

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

There's a strain of anti-Republican sentiment that says that Republicans are anti-government, that things like tax cuts and deregulation are modes of weakening or shrinking the government. Is that what ICE is? How about bathroom policing? Governmental vetos on healthcare? Infinity cop funding? Is that all "anti-government", is that "small government"? Red states, and Republican controlled federal government, doesn't look like a retreat of government power to me: it looks like a reorganization and *expansion* of government, along with centralization of power. Texas and Florida aren't places where the government is meek, fragile, and in retreat: these are places where government is muscular and assertive, deeply involved in daily affairs of life, from setting the agenda for college courses to running concentration camps.

15

1

7

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

Until the 1900s, most national borders were the same as any other political borders, like the borders of towns, cities, or provinces: administrative boundaries that demarcate administrative authority. Militarized borders were rare and considered despotic, with Tzarist Russia as an example.

17

1

14

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

I think one of the few big mistakes in Reconstruction era reforms was the centralization of the US military and the destruction of the state militia system. The founding generation had many flaws but they did hold a pretty sincere antimilitarism that they wrote into the Constitution, which modern liberalism is unfortunately blind to. The decentralized state militia system was a way to prevent a tyrant from taking control of a single massive imperial military, and because of how the fallout of the English Civil War loomed in the minds of the founders, as well as their experiences as English colonies of course, they believed that splitting up the military was a necessary component of their military reforms, alongside things like a reliance on citizen soldiers and strong protections against the military snatching direct formal political power.

10

1

4

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@gwynnion@mastodon.social IMO you're really effectively distilling down one of the biggest electoral arguments, which is basically the Democratic right arguing that their way is the only way to win and Trumpism can't be beaten if Dems can't win, and the center-left arguing that Dems winning isn't sufficient by itself. Ultimately, the Dem-right got their way, Biden won their necessary victory, and it wasn't sufficient.

7

1

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

And wasps aren't just pollinators: wasps are potent little predators, and they really knock down populations of a lot of nastier critters, including flies that can carry disease and caterpillars that can damage crops. If the wasp population gets too low it's a little like a collapse in the population of wolves: the resulting rabbit boom creates all sorts of knock on problems. Baby wasps need a lot of protein, so adult wasps are really very effective hunters. If you garden, they're giving you a hand multiple ways. And look, obviously there are tensions at times between us humans and other animals when we have interactions at cross purposes. Sometimes we really do need to kill some other critters for the health and safety of we critters. But we benefit a lot from being more considerate and restrained neighbors with a lot of our fellow creatures.

7

1

2

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Wasps can be foraging for lots of things that may not be intuitive to you: some will be attracted to very dry, damaged wood because they can collect tiny splinters to make their paper nests out of, some will be attracted to evergreens for resin and sap, some will be attracted to your family barbecue because they're hunting for protein. Foraging wasps are often pretty placid, and are very unlikely to be hostile. I've literally let foraging wasps climb across my hands, they seriously aren't that stressed if they aren't protecting their nests.

6

2

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

For the record I think the biggest signal to be looking out for that US liberals might be serious is if they actually start seriously trying to disempower the internal enemies of democracy, specifically the hyper wealthy, the police, and the supreme court. If they're unwilling to actually disempower these groups, they're ultimately doomed to failure.

6

0

3

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

I think this is one of the benefits of the information age: people can see that capitalism rewards the laziest, most inept, most worthless, most narcissistic, most vile, and pettiest little freaks produced by a society. It's really hard to maintain the propaganda about capitalist meritocracy when everyone can see the capitalists.

9

0

3

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

I don't think it's impossible that a president AOC or Pritzker wages some manner of transformational change to reinvigorate and stabilize liberalism on the scale of the New Deal (or like state pensions and the NHS in the UK). I don't think it's *likely*, but it's possible.

6

1

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

RE: https://beige.party/@RickiTarr/116918286228168962 The threat of billionaires leaving is that they will take the productive capacity they own with them. Often that's not really possible, and we never have to let them do it when it is possible. They can't simply fabricate an appropriate workforce at the snap of their fingers, and it's a matter of policy choice to let them shutter factories.

Quoting

Ricki Yasha Tarr

@RickiTarr@beige.party

It is bizarre that people still fall for, "If you raise taxes the billionaires will just leave" As if the world cannot exist without them. They only bring revenue, by literally not paying people what they're worth. Oh nooo, the ticks are leaving the dog. Please, let the door hit you on the way out.

Open quoted post

beige.party

Ricki Yasha Tarr: "It is bizarre that people still fall for, "If you…" - beige.party

6

1

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@gwynnion@mastodon.social 100% agree, and it ultimately undercuts their own argument because if them winning isn't sufficient then why would anyone be invested in them winning

3

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to on social.treehouse.systems

And as a hint for radicals, the same is true for us. We need to never stop explaining, never stop doing the 101s, etc, these are just broad rules of mass politics

3

0

5

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

*Protestant genocide fan voice* wow these fake Democrat Arabs are really antisemitic

2

0

3

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@EricLawton@kolektiva.social Yeah unfortunately, fake nests haven't been properly studied. They're pretty cheap so I still think they're worth a shot, but they exist in the unfortunate position where we probably wouldn't expect them to work like a hundred percent of the time even if they do work at all, which means that without research it's pretty impossible to evaluate if they really do anything. But like I said, they're cheap, anecdotally some people report success, and it's hard to think of a downside other than being out a few bucks until someone actually does the research.

2

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

European homes aren't weatherized because the kind of society-wide push that makes mass weatherization a reality requires spending that the austerity-obsessed governments of Europe can't stomach. They would rather boil a thousand of their children and elderly every heat wave than spend on making weatherization accessible and prevalent.

3

0

2

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@shwell1@aus.social They're not mutually exclusive. You can vote to fight fires every election but you're going to need firefighters to get the job done.

2

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@jmeowmeow@hachyderm.io For sure I wouldn't be delighted to have them as house guests, but yeah they're frequently not actually very badly behaved

1

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

It's fucking crazy that Canada is stuck with the unholy union of Ronald Reagan and Neville Chamberlain as their PM at this particular moment in history

1

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to on allovertheplace.ca

@DavidGoldfield@allovertheplace.ca All porn? Porn made by feminist worker collectives? Porn comics made by queer liberationists? Amateur porn lovingly made by exhibitionist couples?

1

4

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

In the US, citizenship was granted by the states until the 14th amendment was passed, but *generally* the way things worked for most of US history is that you just....came here. And if you wanted citizenship, and you could meet the (often racial) requirements of the state you settled in, you could register your arrival with the state and then a few years later you were a citizen. The idea that someone immigrating to the US would have to go through a system of military checkpoints and years of inscrutable bureaucracy would have been as absurd as the idea that your town today would pull you over at gunpoint as you tried to enter and make you file special paperwork with town hall in order to avail yourself of the town's Denny's and underwhelming pet supply store.

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 1mo ago

Looking forward to another #bandcampfriday ! As always I'm looking for music recommendations. I've got eclectic taste but tend to prefer stuff with vocals over instrumental. My last three albums I got were from Genesis Owusu, Altamira, and Darkswoon, so like I really am into a whole spread of stuff. If you have recommendations please give them, and if not please boost!

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

RE: https://mas.to/@BruceMirken/116936145274457352 Bill Penzeys is the strongest soldier of the republic tbh

Quoting

Bruce Mirken

@BruceMirken@mas.to

The best Penzeys promotion ever:

Open quoted post

mas.to

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@pelle@veganism.social @chu@climatejustice.social A lot of people have personal vehicles, does that mean that policymakers and car manufacturers have no blame?

0

3

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Trying to explain the US-Iran war to a conservative: "so this is a classic case of a virgin aesthetic-warrior culture trying mog a chad based nerd logisticsmaxxer culture"

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@DavidGoldfield@allovertheplace.ca How does gay porn featuring two men devalue women?

0

1

0

PallasRiot @PallasRiot@social.treehouse.systems

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@pelle@veganism.social @chu@climatejustice.social I think the absurdity of your response kind of makes my point for me lol You can be as upset as you want at individual motorists, and they will continue to need to get to work. Individual consumptive choices are seldom a very coherent or organized form of political expression.

0

1

0