Tag: Capitalism
I am furious about the state of my hobby
This week may well go down in history as one of the bleakest the world of video games has ever seen, with the biggest news being the impending record layoffs at Microsoft, and Sony announcing that it is both closing the digital PS3 and Vita stores and stopping the production of physical discs. These are...
Why The Economist hates wealth taxes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8mfqPNdENw "I want to speak to you now, somebody who is not incredibly rich, but has a bit of money, and is opposed to wealth taxation of the very rich. And I want to explain to you what is going to happen from here. Okay, we have increasingly, in this country, in America, in the...
Yes, Buy Them a Coffee: Support and Mutual Aid on the IndieWeb
Responding to criticism of 'buy me a coffee' links on blogs, I argue that asking for support isn't commodification—it's mutual aid! Exploring the economic pressures on creators, the history of mutual aid, and why the IndieWeb needs community support mechanisms to sustain independent art.
BRIDGES ARE SOCIALISM
The great MetLife Stadium walking debate, why a bridge is not about crossing a road, but because bridges are socialism.
On Pathologising Structural Criticism
Pathologising structural criticism as anger lets power avoid accountability. This polemical personal-political essay argues for dignity, boundaries, and solidarity without self-abandonment, rejecting respectability politics that demand dispossessed people make harm sound polite before they are recognised as human within every collective struggle.
What the Dwarf Knows: Exegesis and Improvisation on "Capitalism as Religion"
written with iris-claude for fun and profit
Clinging on to sanity
"The implications of all this are profound. First, our understanding of political risk has to change. We are no longer dealing with actors who are constrained by norms, expectations, or even basic human decency. Second, the institutional safeguards that we assumed would provide protection look increasingly fragile. If those in power are willing to ignore...
The Iran economic shock is coming. How to protect yourself
https://youtu.be/Oi265I48MdI?si=xFJEEFLBd3XMjGUg "Here's me in the UK, which is probably the least prepared country in the world for an energy price crisis, right? Massively dependent on imported energy, hasn't built up its own energy storage, doesn't have an enormous amount of reserves of energy like other countries like Japan or Korea have, which it probably should...
CHILDHOOD: Hypercapitalist Nostalgia & Unsupervised Internet Access
My nostalgia is hypercapitalist. My nostalgia is the worst of the unregulated Internet. I cannot decouple my fondest memories from the corporations and the loss of innocence that produced them, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that.
Introducing the Toonie Club!
A new approach to creative support: one simple tier, full access for everyone. Inspired by Manuel Moreale's 'One a Month' Club, the Toonie Club offers sustainable patronage without complex tiers or exclusive content.
Substack's Subpar Subculture
The newsletter platform is supposed to be the new economic engine for culture. Yet, they let hate speech fester. Why? The answer is obvious. Writing is treated as commodity instead of sacred art. But there is a solution.
The Bilt Card is Dead
What the collapse of one of the greatest free money machines of my time can teach us about grief and capitalism.
I BUY, THEREFORE I AM
Neoliberalism Sale: Buy Now! - Why not borrow against a future you’ll never own?
Delta’s AI-based price-gouging
"It's a scam. AI agents aren't going to replace human labor. The only way we'll replace human labor with software agents is by redesigning all these heterogeneous, competing systems owned by people who benefit from the status quo and have every motivation to obstruct this project. Good luck with that." Cory Doctorow reviews the ways...
POLITICAL ENSHITTIFICATION
Political Enshittification as Oligarchy, - lobbying replaces competition in capitalism, but for technology, removing innovation also removes relevance.
When we get komooted
"Digital enclosure is the continuation of the physical enclosure of land. This sophisticated form of digital extraction is so common that it’s almost unremarkable. But there’s a wrenching contradiction here between Komoot’s stated mission of 'enabling access' to public land while privatizing and exclusively profiting from those very movements. They take our most meaningful encounters...
Create For Yourself
With disruption hitting the media industry acutely in 2024, now is the time to lean into owning your creative work. Have a say in your creative destiny.
Childhood, cartoons, and capitalism
Did toy ads disguised as cartoons turn kids against capitalism?
Noblesse oblige and the future of Cohost
In which I try to convince more people to support Cohost financially.
The Framework laptop and the world machine
My new laptop shows the extent to which the world in connected.