Over the weekend, Donald Trump suggested creating a police force that metes out punishments with impunity—a model used by Hitler and Mussolini. That story is the most important development over the weekend. It deserves to be headline news in every major media outlet

#hitler #nazi #fascism #authoritarianism #trump #biden #voteblue #police #policebrutality
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/keep-calm-and-carry-on-955

It's wired in, it's blatant, and it's old news, but to me it remains pretty remarkable that the establishment press in the U.S. uses the term "conservative" to mean any action the extreme right wing favors.

The more extreme the act, the more "conservative" are the actors!

Thus, the Freedom Caucus in the House — the members of which are the most ready to let the U.S. default on its debt — are routinely described as the most conservative faction in the government.

#uspol #science #journalism

“People who criticize new technologies are sometimes called Luddites, but it’s helpful to clarify what the Luddites actually wanted. The main thing they were protesting was the fact that their wages were falling at the same time that factory owners’ profits were increasing, along with food prices. They were also protesting unsafe working conditions, the use of child labor, and the sale of shoddy goods that discredited the entire textile industry. The Luddites did not indiscriminately destroy machines; if a machine’s owner paid his workers well, they left it alone. The Luddites were not anti-technology; what they wanted was economic justice. They destroyed machinery as a way to get factory owners’ attention. The fact that the word #Luddite is now used as an insult, a way of calling someone irrational and ignorant, is a result of a smear campaign by the forces of capital.”

Ted Chiang in the New Yorker.

One of the things that quickly becomes apparent as you use #Bluesky is just how much work has gone into making #Mastodon a full function experience over the years.

It's also a good reminder of how much there is still left to build for any federated social media experience to become truly mainstream.