• 0 Posts
  • 61 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
Cake day: April 11th, 2024
  • VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoTechnology@lemmy.world•How can we return to techno-optimism?English
    61·
    17 days ago

    Relevant for me; i nearly changed careers out of tech entirely – being fed up with the state of the industry – but found some great folks in worker cooperative spaces. Here’s what’s kept me optimistic:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UmU1dSe3n0

    Plucked a vid off this channel and let it be known the idea of the channel name is to “reject isms/be your own ism”

    Solarpunk has replaced, for me, the plasteel+glass greenhouse skyscraper skylines. Afrofuturism offers a much better preconfiguration than anything of capitalist and anglo origins. Importantly, the dismantling of unjust heirarchies.

    I never lost the optimism, i just recognized that the root cause of our pain is not going to be addressed by technnlology (new invention) without an equal-or-greater effort into decolonizing and unlearning on the part of those building, using and promoting a given technology.

  • VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoFuck Cars@lemmy.ca•Effectiveness of hi-vis in car traffic
    3·
    23 days ago

    There we are, vitrolic projection, mask off and all. Did that feel good?

    Red? No shame in that but more about the pink-and-black, which yes indeed is opposed to state in addition to class and money. Oh, won’t someone think of the dehumanizers? Clutch ya pearls!

    Yes, how dare we try and make our communities better and imagine a better world /s

    I am grateful for the community I’ve found myself surrounded with. I’ve got the best people I know looking out for me – Which is not something I could say until I cut ties with the conservative bubble I’d been raised and suffocated by. Long overdue.

    Have a nice day :)

  • VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoFuck Cars@lemmy.ca•Effectiveness of hi-vis in car traffic
    2·
    23 days ago

    Any driver, pedestrian or cyclist/etc knows full well that there is no non-hostile way to interact with others when you’re behind the wheel. It’s just the psychology of operating a vehicle with enough mass and traveling at such velocities which destroy the human body. Our car culture was groomed by businessmen, and big business never cared about you and me.

    So no, when I see a car or I see a highway, i dont see just a tool. I see a system which DEMANDS I give it my fealty, that I internalize it’s propaganda that I oWn ThE rOaD and peer out from a tinted window tank with paranoia for all those community members that I’d otherwise meet while walking and cycling in cities made for pedestrians, rather than the hellscape of industry, of commuting from suburbs to be a drone in steel-tower-hives, of just-one-more-lane eminent domain dividing residental areas, dividing neighbors.

    I dont like the word idiot. That it is common parlance isnt the defense of it’s use we think it is. Eptymology reveals more than just ableism, no oppression exists in a vacuum.

    I see the need for fast-transit for medical emergencies. I want an international supply chain for medicine. I see the purpose of transportation as tools.

    When I say “fuck cars” I am not talking about “cars” as tools. I am talking about cars as

    1. A culture

    2. A system (working-class [can’t retire b4 40]) americans cant opt out of

    And

    1. A lingering spectre; I was force fed and helpless to avoid enjoyment of it all: Hotwheels, NASCAR, Cars-the-movie and role models raising me.

    Now in adulthood I have seen countless friends, and then eventually a close family member, ripped violently from this mortal coil by some selfish arrogant asshole’s impatience.

    From there you look to data: 35-45k Fatalities per year in the US related to Car Accidents, and manufactuers can improve odds of the operator/passengers surviving, but forget your neighbors outside the vehicle who are still struck by a massive projectile, right?

    When I say fuck cars, No: It’s not “Oh shucks i sure wish everyone would be patient and generous behind the wheel”

    It’s: “We have been boxed into a system of commuting which has alienated us from our neighbors. We must rethink fundamentally our approach to planning cities. Light rail, trains, cycling and walkable cities. I am full of Love and Hope fueled by Rage and Loss. I will make connections with my neighbors to counteract the alienation and hostility. I will do my damndest to drive like a demure grandma when i must be behind the wheel”

  • VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoFuck Cars@lemmy.ca•Effectiveness of hi-vis in car traffic
    82·
    24 days ago

    We need a change in our culture. Selfish, foolish impatience, drivers insisting they OwN tHe RoAd is exactly what’s killing pedestians and cyclists. You can get where youre going fast enough, but it’s never enough. Fuck that noise, bunch of drunkards ( be it on alcohol or arrogance)

    We all know there’s no non-hostile way to interact with others when youre behind the wheel. Its just the nature of such a heavy vehicle traveling at speeds to where collision destroys the human body. Business men made it this way, and big business never cared about you or me.

  • VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoWorld News@lemmy.world•'Neoliberal capitalism' has contributed to the rise of fascism, says Nobel laureateEnglish
    61·
    1 month ago

    As someone who’s not a doomer, with her Rage fueled Hope, and Hope fueled Rage:

    Deep down, I know you cant believe this status quo can stand for much longer than it has.

    If someone earns a dollar they didnt work for, someone else worked for a dollar they didnt earn.

    As someone who’s transitioned out of economic privilege, I know how hollow all that iPicketFence really is.

    You cant really expect others to aspire to that plastic existence.

    You can’t really believe that endless colonization, that your comfort depending on someone of lower economic class existing, wont eventually result in fascism.

    So that’s why the “Scratch a lib and a fash bleeds” phrase rings true. Thank you for airing out all your laundry for all to screencap, demonstrating just how that when we discuss what neoliberalism pushes, we can see it for thr prefiguration of a right wing authoritarian regime waiting to cannibalize it’s own nation.

    Austerity Kills. Food Not Bombs. Housing is a human right. No Human is Illegal. Threats to the bodily autonomy of any Non-Man or Non-White are a threat for all. These are not utopia or naive, these are the bare basic conditions of humanity that have been stolen from the people, and causes for which local organizing today can tangibly improve lives being lived now AND prefigure a society that we can maybe even, someday have good reason to be proud of. Screw the fear, screw the dread, go build some connections with folks who are also putting in the work for these things, it reinvigorates the soul. (And sure helps reduce time spent with your pocket amulet)