収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

My hold at the library came up, so I finally got to read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir about her time at Facebook.

You should read it.

No matter how bad you might think Facebook/Meta and its leadership might be, it’s almost certainly worse. Even if you know all of the pieces – all of the events discussed in the book were covered by the press in various forms before her memoir dropped – her presentation really pulls it all together.

Wynn-Williams doesn’t come off real great either herself, mind you. Early on, I found myself reacting with combinations of “…how did you expect this to play out?” and “this is both psychotically abusive and incredibly compromising, you should’ve walked. I literally would’ve walked out right here, and I know, ’cause I’ve done it.” (Tho’ to be fair, there have been a couple of times when I didn’t. But mostly, I have.) The recountings alternated between funny and hard to read, but in a way most people would mostly find funny – I think.

That was before it actually got to any of the worst parts, though, the parts where it went from a combination of entertainingly naive, occasionally pathetic, and often appalling to frankly revolting and rather deeply grim but still compelling as the… honestly, as the evil… crystallised.

But, well.

No matter how badly Wynn-Williams might come across in this memoir, Facebook comes off much, much worse.

So much worse.

So you should read it. No one other than Meta have contested the contents. Even they refer to the contents as “out of date” and “previously reported,” which worlds away from “lies” – although they do insist some of her accusations of behaviour by upper-level executives are “false.”

That’s probably about the sexual harassment, but I think we all know better.

More, Zuckerberg tried very hard to silence her and stop the book’s publication. He did manage to stop her – via binding arbitration – from promoting her work. That includes stating “orally, in writing, or otherwise any disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments to any person or entity concerning [Meta], its officers, directors, or employees.”

The book came out anyway, because the publisher was in the UK, and said they didn’t care what an American arbitrator had to say.

And that’s one of the reasons you should read it.

Because if you think there is anything redeemable within Meta… based on the uncontested facts of this book… you are wrong.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Once upon a time, I was friends with a guy named Jim. A very, very few of you might know him. Almost all of you won’t.

I walked away some years ago, blocked him on the socials over his support for the fascist, because I said that the fascist’s promises absolutely, positively, literally required American concentration camps, and that’s what he was supporting by supporting the fascist, and I could not abide that…

…and yet, he carried on, saying I was a fool, and that none of it would ever happen.

(I asked him then why did he support someone he insisted was lying to him. I do not remember getting an answer, before I quit.)

So now that we have American concentration camps…

…and now that people with direct access to the fascist are talking about sending literally every American citizen of Latino heritage there to die…

(it will require more concentration camps than that, of course, but that’s a detail which makes no difference)

I wonder…

…has he yet been moved to repentance?

Or is he still a good and solid member of that wretched cult?

It’s immaterial now, of course. We are long past the point where the pebbles’ opinions matter, and crimes already done cannot be undone.

But once in a while, I think of it.

And for a moment – a pointless, irrelevant moment – I still wonder.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

December 7th, 1941: the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a day that will live in infamy” in his famous speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war against Japan.

That particular epithet – that’s a strong one. And unlike most such epithets, it’s held up. People know it, still.

I mean, sure, slogans like “Remember the Maine!” rallied people at the time, but it’s an historical footnote; “Remember the Alamo!” has more weight, but not because of the attack – it’s because of the hopeless and romanticised defence.

(That it was, push comes to shove, in defence of slavery is important but not relevant to my line of thought here.)

Why was the Pearl Harbour attack somehow that much worse?

It wasn’t that Japan attacked a purely military target in a United States territory. Nothing wrong with that by the rules of war. Certainly nothing infamous about it, either. Within the rules of war, it’s fair play.

It’s not that it was a surprise, even – though it was, and that tends to be what people think of when they hear the phrase. Most people at the time assumed a Japanese Imperial attack would come in the Philippines, not in Hawai’i. But surprise attacks are the meat and gravy of war, and simply good strategy – again, not a source of infamy.

It wasn’t even, really, that they started the war with the attack. That’s kind of how wars tend to go. As a rule, one doesn’t go declare war and then stand around a while giving your enemy a week or two to get their defences in place.

So why were people who were absolutely expecting war – absolutely getting ready for a war – with Japan still so very angry about the way it started? What made a crowd certain that war was inevitable – a crowd that was getting ready for it, whether they liked it or not – go, “oh, that is too goddamn far”?

It was that Japan was literally still negotiating as the bombs fell.

Roosevelt mentions this in his speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war. It’s shallow in the specifics, but it’s explicitly there, in the first minute. He didn’t have to get into the weeds of details; everybody in Congress knew.

The Japanese attack started at 12:48pm Eastern time. The military finally got word sometime after 1:30pm Eastern time. The Japanese ambassador had scheduled a meeting with Secretary of State Hull for 1:45pm, and didn’t show up until 2:05pm, by which time the bombs had been falling for over an hour – and even then, they delivered a statement responding to a previous US position paper delivered on November 26th.

It was harsh, but it was no declaration of war.

The Japanese delegation were literally negotiating as their air force’s bombs fell.

That betrayal – that subterfuge, that backstab – coloured the entire rest of the war in the Pacific, up to and including the decision to use those atomic bombs.

Does that still-negotiating-as-the-bombers-let-fly trick sound like something that just happened this afternoon?

Maybe it should.

Japan’s plan was a quick but heavy knockout blow on a military target, to weaken American forces in the Pacific and force the Americans to accede to their demands in China.

Trump’s plan was apparently also a quick but heavy knockout blow on military targets, to force the Iranians to accede to Trump’s – and Netanyahu’s – demands in the Middle East.

Iran is in no way the 1940s US; Trump’s clown car criminal crowd is in no way the leadership of Imperial Japan. This is not World War II, and since Trump didn’t go nuclear, I don’t think it’s World War III; this is not that kind of projection, so don’t make it into one.

I’m just talking infamy. As far as infamy goes?

Yeah.

I could really see saying this is an act of infamy.

Obviously, that’s the kind of thing Iran would say, no matter what. Aside from that, times have changed. Asymmetrical war, disinformation, irregular warfare as a primary strategy – all those old ideas about war have rather gone by the way side. It’s hard to talk about something as infamous in war these days.

But still. I could see it.

And more importantly… I could see people believing it.

Couldn’t you?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Today’s Tuesday. There’s a Tuesday #TeslaTakedown protest, Lynnwood, Tesla dealership on 99. 4:15pm TODAY, like usual. As I’m writing, that’s literally an hour and like 20 minutes away.

Yeah I kinda forgot too lol, but no reprieves for the fascist.

Let’s get out there~~~

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

I’ve got a post going up tomorrow (Monday) morning, but the word you need to understand right now is:

Remigration

If you don’t already know this word – or if you’re in certain areas of academia and think you do, but do not in any context outside academia – you need to know what this word means right now. And you need to make sure your friends know what it means.

Wikipedia will explain it to you.

More tomorrow.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Here’s a good short piece on Elon Musk’s propaganda campaign to recover/rebuild his image.

Morons, fools, and co-conspirators – by which I mean the bulk of the so-called political press in the United States – will almost uniformly fall for it. They’ll in fact do their very best to fall for it, because it’s a nice story and because it means they can take what they’re being spoon-fed and not have to think about it too hard as they type – much less think about their enabling role in this whole nightmare.

Musk got most of what he wanted. Not all of it, but a lot – particularly in fucking up the government in general, ending all those pesky investigations into all his illegal activities, and in loading himself up with nice fat corrupt government contracts. Cutting medicaid and medicare and throwing women and non-whites out of government were bonus points.

Now he’s partially – I stress partially – stepping away, to a degree because he’s sick of all those people who are equally sick of him, but more I think to try to staunch the bleeding damage he’s caused to his own businesses. Particularly Tesla, where $TSLA share price is so key to all his other leveraged wealth.

(Oh, Elon, so you know, I’ll be at the Tesla Takedown on Tuesday. But if you lock yourself into one of your own burning “cybertrucks” before then, then I’ll be glad to stay home.)

Regardless – the press will absolutely let him off the hook. So will all the people who don’t want to think about anything, and the people who want to assuage their feelings of guilt about being on X or buying one of his shitmobiles.

So I’m asking – can we not all fall for the same stupid fake reputational redemption arc for once? Please? The press will, but… please don’t join them this time, okay?

And don’t let others join them either. That’ll be the harder part.

Most of you reading me, you’re probably less likely to fall in.

But ask yourself: will your friends fall for it? Particularly the techier ones, easily distracted by shiny rockets and who still pretend that wasn’t a Hitler salute at the inauguration, the one that matches frame-for-frame to actual Hitler throwing the actual salute?

I think we all know that answer. Try to keep them from buying in.

And if you can’t… don’t go along.

Do that much, if nothing else.

Don’t. Go. Along.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Holy fucking hell, people are reviving the “the Trump shooting was staged” crap again, fuelled this time by ChatGPT slop.

I refer you to this writeup I posted the last time this was going around. We have a picture of the bullet as it’s going by his head. It wasn’t fucking staged.

jesus fucking christ

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Miller’s out there again threatening the courts with a suspension of habeas corpus if they don’t rule the way the fascists want. Explicitly. In words.

They’re threatening to start arresting anyone and everyone they want, at will, with absolutely no legal recourse for anyone. That’s what “suspending habeas corpus” means. Habeas corpus is the right to challenge an imprisonment through law, through the courts – it means you have to have a reason to arrest someone and it has to be valid, and people can demand you demonstrate that it’s valid or otherwise release that person.

Most people are quoting the “looking at” part, but I want to highlight two other phrases. First, I want to point at the monstrous cur calling this fundamental right of the Constitution a “privilege”:

“…the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended…”

Habeas corpus is a fundamental right, not a goddamn privilege, you solipsistic ghoul, and you know it but you don’t care. It predates the Constitution; hell, it predates the Magna Carta. What he’s doing here is telling the MAGAt base what to say and how to react, saying that it’s not a right, it’s some kind of bonus which can be taken away.

And that’s horseshit. If you don’t have the right to contest your own imprisonment, if you can be imprisoned by them at will, thrown overseas or into some dark hole to die with absolutely no recourse, then you have no rights at all, and that’s what they’re going for. You: no rights. Them: absolute power. That’s the intent.

Now, to the threat:

“[suspending habeas corpus] depends upon whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

If the courts don’t let them do whatever they want, they’ll throw out the most fundamental right that can exist – the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned without recourse.

The right not to be disappeared.

The right to exist at all.

For anyone.

That’s what he wants to take away. That’s what they want to take away.

This alone should be cause for impeachment, conviction, and removal.

That it’s not is a complete condemnation, by their own hands, of the Republican Party.

If you’re not getting out there on the streets, why the hell not? Here are some places to look for protests near you:

• Tesla Takedown – this is a big weekend for anti-Musk protests at Tesla dealerships. Find yours. Get out there.
• Indivisible – this is a bigger list with a more general focus. Find something near you. Get out there.
• No Kings – June 14th. Put it on your calendar now. Be there.

The more effective we are, the more of us there are, the more radical and scary they’ll get up to the point where they piss off enough people that they get taken down. But we have to keep building, and we have to keep getting out there, and dragging as many people out there with us as we can if we ever want to reach that point.

It’s been said a bunch, but the rubber has hit the road, and if you’ve ever wondered what you would do in the 1930s, you’re finding out now, because it’s what you’re doing right now.

Make it the right thing.

Get out there, team. And stay out there. If we want to keep a republic, we have to get this done.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Okay, so remember when I told everybody to hold April 19th? Here’s where you can search for a 50501 event near you, and there are definitely going to be other events on the same day by other groups.

It will NOT be as big as April 5th. But a good turnout is important – and basically will continue to be important for months and months.

The next really massive turnout day looks like it’s going to be May 1st, though. Reserve the day. Indivisible is cooking something up, 50501 will be in on it, so will a lot of other people, or so I hear. Put it on your calendar now, so you’re ready.

Here are some other April 19 events in the Seattle area, compiled by Indivisible. I’m sure you can find something to do.

See you out there, and as always – good hunting.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Here’s a page with a bunch of Hands Off!-specific protest signs for this weekend. If you don’t have one you can print those and paste them onto foamcore or similar to have some signs to carry around.

Signs are good, I recommend them.

Here are a couple I made – I was thinking I might just use one of the two I already had, but the ones that weren’t super-specific to Musk are kinda small, so. Honestly they’re not really my best work, but if you don’t like the Hands Off! ones you might give them a look. I do like the Trump-as-Disney’s-Prince-John cartoon, I must say.

If you haven’t found a protest near you yet, here’s where you can find them. Go to the web site, find a protest – and for the gods’ sakes, show up.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.