This blindness to non-personified power is why Buckle can't find an explanation for the present rise of fascism. He can't see that the economic suffering caused by 45yrs of neoliberalism delegitimized the bi-partisan consensus that preserved it. Conservatism just fell *first*. Liberalism is next.
Likewise, Fascist *ideas* reject the economic, but Fascism has always been funded and empowered by capitalists preserving the capital order. Yes, they're sometimes brought to heel by fascism, but in the meantime the socialists have been murdered, solving capital's problem.
It's fine if you're into rank idealism, but ideas don't move history, they only try to explain it.
Liberal *ideas* proclaim a commitment to a broad wellbeing, but wealth and power under liberal systems moves from the poor to the rich and liberals have, historically, conserved that order.
For me it's when Carre's eyes light up as he realizes he's made it through.
The great not-pacifist anti-war song . . .
youtu.be/cBGkhPx529g?...
It's well worth it. Station 11 too.
Promo image for the movie Drive My Car. Near a seaside, a man in dark clothing leans against a red car. A young woman sits in the driver's seat. The text "Drive My Car"appears over the image.
Drive My Car (2021)
I think it would be great if LLMs were a neutral technology that just needed to be taken away from the oligarchs, but they're not. Oligarchs are building an Oligarchy Tool.
Unfortunately, the affordances of AI systems extinguish these institutional features at every turn. In this essay, we make one simple point: AI systems are built to function in ways that degrade and are likely to destroy our crucial civic institutions. The affordances of AI systems erode expertise, short- circuit decision-making, and isolate people from each other. They are anathema to the kind of evolution, transparency, cooperation, and accountability that give vital institutions their purpose and sustainability. In short, current AI systems are a death sentence for civic institutions, and we should treat them as such.
Here's an analysis of the second order effects off LLM use and how they're essentially all anti-social.
scholarship.law.bu.edu/cgi/viewcont...
Here's one of the fathers of AI research explaining the inherent shortcomings of LLMs and the differences between the AI that Capital is excited to build and the AI that would actually be good for something. youtu.be/aI7XknJJC5Q?...
They could be building reasoning machines capable of learning and checking against ground truth, but instead they're making symbol generators that are often wrong but sound plausible. That's a handy tool if you're an oligarch.
It has almost no utility in a fact-based, democratic socialist society.
Everything from the moat created by being capital intensive, to the appropriation of existing work, to putting the creation of facts into the hands of wealthy platform owners, serves Capital and CANNOT serve Labor. That's WHY they're dumping hundreds of billions into it.
Not the same. No part of a sewing machine is analogous to LLMs training on and imitating the work of culture workers.
I don't think you're grasping the specifics of the LLM tool or the way they were chosen for the ends of the ruling class.
You can't use a battleship to erect wind turbines and you can't use an LLM to support a free society. You're talking about seizing the labor theft and rentier machine.
Because what they built has no place in a just society. It was built to consolidate power and wealth and that pays out in what it does and how it does it.
EVERY LLM prompt steals the product of cultural workers and takes power from living workers.
Would another, public AI be possible to develop without the profit motive, rentierism or locking away productive forces? Maybe. No one is working on that. It probably wouldn't be an LLM, for starters.
They're making LLMs because they require capital intensive training which creates a rentier moat, because they deskill cultural creation, because they're an accountability sink for corporations.
Everything about THIS AI is a pro-capital move in the class war and abstention is the right choice.
This is how I learned my friends don't really love me, cause if they did they'd have done this already.
It means that you prioritize things like workplace organizing and mutual aid over elections because that's what your theory of change tells you will work. It can be a reasonable position and a lot of comrades doing huge work hold to it.
Look it's completely accurate that mainstream US journalists don't know what these references are
but ALSO they don't know what Politics is. They never stood a chance.
This is bleak: Jes Staley, currently CEO of Barclays, reassuring Epstein that popular revolt against financial elites is unlikely because capitalism and pop culture have defanged social movements, leaving people more invested in consumption than justice.
These are local police.
If you were sceptical about "Abolish ICE" a few years ago, please ask yourself if you're making the same error about local PD now.
DeLauro said, as a legislator in the minority of a large body, she has to thread the needle carefully with what she supports and votes for. “I would rather you vote for what is morally correct,” Davidson said. “Don’t talk to me about my own morality,” DeLauro shot back. “Don’t tell your constituents what they can and can’t talk to you about,” replied Rev. Nathan Empsall of the Episcopal Church of St. Paul and St. James in New Haven. “What you are voting for is not moral.”
I've heard this kind of thing from electeds before and it's frankly disgusting. The morality of your words and votes are fair game. If you don't like it you shouldn't be in the big chair.
Also all the clergy is this article are legends.
www.ctpublic.org/news/2026-02...
ME: I need a molded plywood splint to reduce injuries suffered by wounded servicemembers in transit
CHARLES & RAY EAMES: here you go
ME: I also need an educational film illustrating the powers of ten and the nicest chair anyone has ever seen
CHARLES & RAY EAMES: you're not going to believe this
Just do normal stuff for a while and these guys will all show up and tell on themselves.
This is the most important one thing to know about NY politics in 2026.
Even though Hochul will win the primary + the general, and many of our Left electeds will endorse her, the rank + file Left must campaign hard and vote against her in the primary to shift the balance of power in the state.
It would be darkly hilarious if the key to the epistemological knot Adam Tooze describes as Polycrisis were simply, "World events were driven by elite pedophiles who prioritized their child sex pipelines and collective chumminess over rational administration of nations and firms."
This is tremendous. Take the time to watch it.
"Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one like." Antonio Gramsci
