FledglingPoet

Author of short stories and several poems.

[Trevor McArdle @McardleTrevor]

Ukraine bomb Russian data centres (bot farms)

Reform on-line engagement drops like a stone

Burnham states that Russia have interfered in British politics

Farage calls Burnham a liar

I think we all know who the liar is

[Fiona-Natasha Syms REJOIN 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 @SymsFifi]

Only twice in my lifetime have I ever even vaguely considered voting Labour and it’s been this year and it speaks to how extreme the Tories have become under Badenoch. 1) In locals to thank Starmer for staying out of Iran and 2) with the humongous carrot of Brexit reversal dangling in all our faces, I’m not at all mad on Burnham but he’s making nice if not sexy on the EU, I’ll take it. I never thought Tories would be stupid enough to either back Trump or bombing Iran but that strain of completely mad Tory, long kept to the distant margins but exploded with Truss is now in charge. I never thought Tories including now Rishi would be tactically or economically stupid enough to look at Brexit and go yup it’s all going well, nothing to see here. And as for the ECHR stuff, they have a deathwish, read a goddamn poll. Tories have driven natural, middle of the road Tory voters in to the arms of Labour (and LDs).

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

One of the greatest moments in Capitol history.

When Laura Loomer attempted to disrupt a hearing, Missouri Rep. Bill Long, who is a real auctioneer, began calling a fake auction to drown her out until she was escorted her out.

He then yields to laughter.

[same at on the other app @colleenawilson]

This is one of the best answers I’ve ever seen

[Chetuya Chinagolum @Chetuyachinago]

This is exactly how history gets twisted, castrated, and morphed into full-blown propaganda.

There is nothing more insensitive and criminally offensive than blaming the poverty in Africa solely on the premise that Africans failed to learn trade, statecraft, and management techniques from their colonial masters. This analysis would only be correct if colonialism was a joint venture where the colonizers brought in their technology and superior machinery, engaged in training the locals on how to use them, and set up a robust educational system to support and sustain that development.

Colonialism never assumed this shape or form. It was evidently a one-way, abusive relationship where the colonizers violently imposed their will and mandate on their colonial subjects. The only technology brought to them were the machine guns used to subjugate the people. The heavy machinery used to refine and process their agricultural crops and mineral wealth was stationed exclusively in the capital cities of the colonial empire. Even the machines that were supposed to assist or facilitate the extraction of this mineral wealth were not brought into the besieged countries, simply because it was cheaper to use bullets to force the people to work nonstop under the scorching sun with bare, medieval farming tools.

The railways built in several parts of Africa and the rest of the Global South do not count as development either. They merely served as a logistical mechanism to facilitate the extraction of resources from the slave plantations to the seaports, not to connect the people or facilitate domestic trade. The schools and courtrooms erected also do not count. They were never fully-fledged learning grounds designed to build professionals who would manage the country for the greater good. Instead, they were grooming grounds for clerks and typists whose sole purpose was to manage the administrative paperwork of wealth extraction. The newly trained judges only served the function of upholding the criminal declarations of the empire whenever it was time to steal indigenous lands or unjustly imprison critics of the colonial plantation.

Therefore, blaming the colonized for not learning how to build railways, skyscrapers, and modern technology from their colonial masters is nothing but a severe manifestation of historical ignorance. Furthermore, the fact that this documentary is based on the Congolese experience makes the entire narrative a total sham.

The Congolese were not only exploited, subjugated, and subjected to genocide by the Belgians. The most damning reality is that the moment they truly voted and rallied behind a revolutionary leader who would work for the betterment of the Congolese people shortly after gaining independence, that leader was violently overthrown. Patrice Lumumba was couped out of office, humiliated on the streets of the Congo, gunned down by a firing squad, and his body was later dissolved in acid. All of these acts were orchestrated by a coalition of Western intelligence agencies, a fact that is now well-documented in history books. In place of Lumumba, Mobutu Sese Seko was ushered into power. He turned the Democratic Republic of Congo into a neo-colonial slave plantation for global powers to exploit as they saw fit, all while Western governments protected his brutal regime.

This is not just about the Congo. We are witnessing in real time how France has carried out the exact same playbook in the Sahel, currently teaming up with proxy forces to topple revolutionary governments and return the Sahelian states back to their default settings as neo-colonial slave plantations. This is the grim reality of virtually all sovereign states in the Global South that once served as plantation farms for Western oligarchs.

The sad reality is that the people who produce these documentaries, and those who amplify them on social media platforms, see, know, and understand all of this perfectly well. The Western journalists who write and depict Africans as savages unfit to govern themselves know this is not the case, but they keep pushing these propaganda pamphlets because it helps sustain the system of extraction. It ensures that the working-class citizens living within the imperial core do not see the poverty in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as the foundational sine qua non that sustains the technology, infrastructure, and industrialization they enjoy in the Global North.

They have to be propagandized into seeing our poverty as a testament to our supposed laziness and lower intelligence quotients, rather than as the direct result of centuries of over-exploitation. Even though it has been meticulously proven by economists that for every $1 sent to the Global South in aid, about $14 is extracted and shipped out to subsidize the luxury of the Global North, this information is neatly wrapped up and tossed away. It does not conform to the prevailing narrative that Africa and the rest of the Global South remain grossly underdeveloped despite trillions supposedly spent on "aid."

Of course, the workers of the Global North are also slaves to this exact same capitalist system. But as long as they are housed in nicer prisons and conditioned to see the rest of us working in the open fields of the Global South as "lesser" than them, the capitalist ruling class will continue to sit at the top of the food chain for the rest of human history.

[Reggie B. @reggiebblue]

Mike Collins just walked right into a trap.

He tried to sound tough on Epstein but didn’t expect Jon Ossoff’s comeback here.

Ossoff: “Mike, who on your team advised you to raise the Epstein files. You voted to cover up the evidence because Donald Trump told you to. Donald Trump, who by the way, is named 1000 times in the Epstein files.”

For the record, Donald Trump is named 38,000 times more than anyone else -- more than even Jesus is named in the Bible.

Perhaps you should sit this one out Mike.

[Sir Norman of Nowhere. 🏴‍☠️ @Normanjam67]

They are getting rid of any social security now as they know that AI is going to take a large percentage of the available work.
If you support it you are cutting the throats of your own children.
The billionaires are never going to willingly give us a Universal Basic Income.

[Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule]

Jaime West, the Democratic Candidate for Fayette County Council who likely wouldn't pass a breathalyzer test, gave a shockingly accurate (and comprehensive) answer about what she would change in Indiana.

WATCH TO THE END (it is too good).

[Sir Mike Jansen #FBPPR #FBPE #RejoinEU #PropRep @MikeJPretzel]

Too good not to repost.

[Dan O'Hagan ⚽️🎙️ @danohagan]

Imagine being the documentary maker and you get back to look through your rushes and find this. There has never been a finer sports documentary, and this moment its absolute zenith.

[A Funny Old Game @sid_lambert]

33 years ago today:

A blatant red card, a rotten referee, and a rubbish night in Rotterdam for Graham Taylor’s England…

“LINESMAN! LINESMAAAN!!!”

[InevitableFacts 🙈🙉🙊 @Nikhedonia11]

Strange how the Right Wing press never put this to Farage when he rants and raves about refugees coming to the UK.

This would totally demolish his argued.

[Rowland Manthorpe @rowlsmanthorpe]

Today I went to a select committee hearing on AI. A few interesting things came out of it, but what really stuck with me was the behaviour of the MPs

They weren’t paying attention

At one point I counted 6 of the 13 MPs on the committee looking at their phones. And not in that way you do when you’re quickly checking something - two stared at their phones for over half an hour. Several others left before the end

Many people think AI is the most important thing in the world. The MPs were warned there was a 50/50 chance it might destroy humanity! You’d think that’d be enough to make you take your chance to listen to experts and key players on the topic - apparently not

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

One of the men in this picture is a politician currently serving 10 and a half years in prison for accepting Russian bribes. The other was his boss and doesn't think there's evidence of Russia interfering in UK politics.

[Scott Santens @scottsantens]

This conveys a poor understanding of Universal Basic Income which has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. UBI only concerns the means of CONSUMPTION, which is cash. Cash is how to signal demand in markets. Cash is the freedom to choose, and its unconditional provision means the power to refuse domination via a poverty-protected position.

An employee with UBI is one who can walk away, which transforms the labor market into a free market instead of one running on coercion via the implication of harm as a direct result of saying no to a bad deal.

India tested a UBI. Entire villages full of thousands of people got UBI for about two years. The result? Lots of positive impacts that included entrepreneurship tripling in treatment villages compared to control villages. Why? Because UBI reduces the risk of failure, and because UBI helps create customers with money to spend. Businesses need customers.

That's not a monopolization of the means of production. It's the opposite. It's more small businesses and greater competition. How on Earth can you consider it dystopian for everyone to receive a dividend like everyone in Alaska has received a dividend for over 40 years?

We all created the training data for AI models. It's made possible by OUR CAPITAL. We should be seen as shareholders who expect a return on OUR investment.

[Mr Ethical 🚩 @nw_nicholas]

Reform are rich - that means they think they can litigate themselves out of all the media exposure of their corruption. They can't.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

American politics makes sense if you understand it as oligarchs' experiment testing the limits of how brazenly they can buy elections and fleece everyone before there's a backlash by an electorate that's been inculcated to be more obedient and credulous than any before it.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Most of the excuses people make for letting chatbots "write" for them are just admissions of a glaring personality defect.

"But I HATE writing!"

Okay, that's a character flaw, and you should change that about yourself.

"I know what I want to say, I just don't know how to say it."

That's a character flaw and you should change that about yourself.

"I get an idea I want to express, but when I sit down to write I get overwhelmed with frustration and restlessness."

Yeah, that's a character flaw and you should change that about yourself.

Writing isn't just some skill you can have like juggling or surfing. Writing is thinking. Writing is the practice of sorting through the flotsam and jetsam of your own consciousness and transforming your thoughts and feelings into coherent, logical expression. Engaging in this practice makes you a more mature and cognitively lucid person than you otherwise would be.

It's not always easy to delve into your depths and form articulate word-sculptures out of the jumbled messes you'll encounter there. It can be frustrating. It can be confrontational. It can force you to challenge your pre-conceived notions and interrogate your own belief systems in ways you find uncomfortable. Sometimes you feel like you want to jump up and start running as fast as you can to escape the intimidating stare of the blank page in front of you.

Learning to work past these escapist impulses and drill down into the meat of your own vulnerable expression is what personal growth looks like. You learn to be courageous. You learn that the emotional surges which feel like they're trying to whip you out of your desk chair are only feelings, and that you are large enough to safely embody them. You learn to calm your inner waters so that you can stare at the blank page until something inspired bubbles up from deep within you.

I never really know what I want to say when I sit down to write an essay. I'll begin with an opinion, a feeling, maybe a snappy line or two if I'm lucky, but everything after that point arises from a process of patient and methodical internal excavation.

I need to get very clear, sentence by sentence, about what I know and how I know it. Every step of the way I'm asking myself "Okay, what's the next thing that needs to be said? Is that true? How do I know it's true? Is that morally correct? How do I know it's morally correct? How can I defend that position?" I often need to do research and gather sources to support my claims, depending on whether I'm writing about things out there in the world or things inside myself I can discuss from personal experience.

Line by line I'm becoming clearer and clearer about the subject I'm writing on, and I get to take that clarity with me for the rest of my life. At the end of every essay, I am a deeper and more edified person than I was when I began.

None of that would have happened if I just told a chatbot to generate some text for me. I would end exactly where I began: with the basic nub of an opinion, plus a midwit validation machine telling me I'm correct and awesome for having that opinion.

It doesn't make me grow. It doesn't make me mature. It doesn't make me deepen my understanding of the subject at hand. It leaves me completely unchanged as a person.

No actual, meaningful improvements will have been made to me. The only benefit it provides is the ability to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings and freeing up some time that I can then spend watching TV or scrolling TikTok.

Today I saw a large Twitter account say, "As soon as AI is good enough to write blog posts in my voice as good as I would have written them, i intend to use AI to do so. I know what I want to say, and I could say so much more if I didn't need to manual labor the words out one by one."

I hate this. I hate what we're becoming as a society. I hate how AI is making us so dumb so quickly that the simple act of writing is already being described as "manual laboring the words out one by one," like it's some superhuman feat of exertion that nobody should be expected to be capable of.

The most dangerous consequences of AI are the mass surveillance systems and war machinery that our rulers are building these new technologies into, as well as the environmental impact of all the new data centers required for their operation. But individual use of generative AI is also having highly destructive effects on human consciousness, the most widespread and consequential of which is surely the disappearance of our ability to write.

P.S. Fuck ChatGPT for ruining em dashes for everyone. I loved those little guys.

[Mr Ethical 🚩 @nw_nicholas]

I've heard part of the ITV Reform exposé includes someone calling for Muslims to be dragged out of their homes and shot. Sarah Pochin was there. This is friend of a friend of a friend....but sounds legit.

[Despotic Inroad @DespoticInroad]

This is true, of course. But the Greens' Left/Right split operates principally at the level of vibes/strategy rather than policy substance.

Caroline Lucas is no RW "Mango Green" (Green on outside + Orange/Lib Dem on the inside). For years she wrote for the Morning Star (Communist Party-supporting paper). She was on the board of the Stop the War coalition. As Green leader, she ran on manifestos promising:
👉60% top rate of income tax
👉Universal Basic Income
👉4-day working week
👉Nationalised utilities, care sector, transport (inc. buses)
👉"Wealth Tax" on "top 1%"
...and much else besides...

It's crucial to remember how Leftwing the Greens were BEFORE Zack Polanski – Labour's 2019 Corbynite policy offer has more-or-less been their default minimum position for a while. It was just hidden behind nicey-nicey herbal tea & bicycle conservationist projections – progressive, yes, even Guardianista, but not scary, not threatening. That's how they won 2 seats in the True Blue Tory provinces.

The difference with the new leadership is that Polanski is not The Guardian, he's Novara-coded, with a strategy that's far more aggressive, more Left-populist (in the Laclau/Mouffe tradition), antagonistic etc. It targets a whole new coalition, potentially alienating the CountryFile save-the-newt voters: downwardly mobile urban graduates + ultra-progressive public sector professionals + Muslims. Very little of the new membership influx is from organised Trotskyist entryists but from the large group of the Greta-Gaza demographic tribe who LIKED Jezbollah – Gen Z/Millennial Socialists, "Generation Left", and it's making the more hippy-dippy older CND types like Lucas uncomfortable (not least because the Zionism motion is objectively mad).