Exactly 14 years ago , Satoshi Nakamoto designed the most pathetic / inefficient system ever invented by humankind : the blockchain.

Today, it weights 60 000 tons, wastes constantly 10 gigawatts (more than Belgium or Chile) to process less than 7 transactions per second :

Less than a 33 bps modem from 1990.

This could be a joke if it didn't have such gigantic environmental impact, wasn't enabling billion dollars ransomware industry and was not crushing thousands of lives in the process.

The discrepancy in how the label “activist” is applied in mainstream media reporting and commentary is really striking - and this is true for all different kinds of issues: Conservatives are concerned parents or citizens - people on the Left or perceived as progressives are “activists.”

https://twitter.com/notabigjerk/status/1633497574236643330?s=46&t=1xecvNVImNo8TKt3oEvqnA

A wheelie good time...

Fatbike ride in one amazing provincial park within #Calgary city limits.

#biketooter #yyc #photography #cycling #mtb #landscape #winter #mountainbiking #alberta #canada #nature #sundaysky #silentsunday

History is so important.

"A group of anti-fascists disrupting a white supremacist gathering"

#Linguistic_Hijacking

Here is a term you didn't know you needed, although you've seen many, many examples of it: *Linguistic Hijacking*

Linguistic hijacking is, formally, "the phenomenon wherein politically significant terminology is co-opted by dominant groups in ways that further their dominance over marginalized groups."

Think, for example, on how the right has tried to turn the meanings of the words and phrases "woke", "Critical Race Theory", "racism", "conversion therapy", "feminism", "homophobia", and "discrimination" inside-out and you have a decent grasp of what that entails.

It is an attempt to strip marginalized people of the very words created to *describe* that marginalization by deliberately corrupting their meaning to favor dominant groups instead.

Here is a paper written by Derek Anderson at Boston University on the subject:

Linguistic Hijacking, September 2020
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344052755_Linguistic_Hijacking

It always begins as a joke. Listen to me, both of you.

One sees a father or a mother of whom they do not approve --

And their brats won't shut up and the parents are so exhausted that they just let their children scream, all sticky and crying and hitting and wild.

And you say to your friends, "You should have to pass a test to breed." Do you understand? "You should have to get licensed to have kids."

It starts as a joke.

1/ 🧵

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Updated image description with credit, as several people have confirmed where it's from. Thanks!

https://www.marvel.com/comics/collection/54962/x-men_years_of_future_past_trade_paperback

Reminder: Billionaires are not “self-made.” They’re made via a combination of inherited wealth, government subsidies, tax loopholes, labor exploitation, and policy failures.

Can we stop perpetuating a myth that blames the wealth gap on the choices of everyday Americans?