With Europe’s borders back in the headlines, please consider reading ‘My Fourth Time, We Drowned’ if you haven’t already. It’s very important to have a fuller picture before weighing in.

Sally Hayden@sallyhayd.bsky.social · 2y ago

A reminder that 'My Fourth Time, We Drowned' is now available in Spanish 🇪🇸: capitanswing.com/libros/cuand... Italian 🇮🇹: www.bollatiboringhieri.it/libri/sally-... French 🇫🇷: www.buchetchastel.fr/catalogue/bi... Dutch 🇳🇱: nieuwamsterdam.nl/producten/en... Polish 🇵🇱: soniadraga.pl/postfactum/p...

Today was my first day at MPIWG in Berlin! Who do I know in Berlin?

I, for one, never expected a Berlin chapter in this life.

Re Erik Davis, Professor Mcalester College Buddhist Studies "The indictment....does allege...Davis helped facilitate an “emergency meeting” for residents interested in “resistance to ICE” that featured discussions of protest tactics" www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

The professor facing prison in ‘antifa’ case: ‘They want to scare all who oppose ICE’

Erik Davis is accused by the government of a ‘conspiracy’ to obstruct ICE – experts say it’s part of a pattern to criminalize lawful organizing and ruin activists’ lives

theguardian.com

The specificity of our nations+peoples matters. We cannot use pan-Indigenous 'stakeholder' approach when the future of our nations is being gambled off in national strategies that do not even once mention the federal duty to consult or free prior & informed consent. Sovereignty is more than words.

'Indigenous' in Canada has come to replace First Nations, Inuit, Métis & our specific laws, protocols, histories as well as our inter-nation treaties+governance. The AFN & Chiefs of Ontario have both troubled how the feds treat us as 'stakeholders', not rightsholders on AI/digital governance.

I take a cue from Kim TallBear, who troubles the use of "Indigenous" as a catch-all that can erase the specificity of nations, peoples, tribes *in the places we co-constitute from time immemorial*. Vine Deloria, Jr. urged us not to recreate teleologies that divorce us from place+obligations to it.

The real challenge is: what would it look like to build systems outside classical Newtonian colonial capitalist systems altogether? What if colonial society were to catch up to *us*? That's where the real work lies. Provincializing Europe, as Fanon and many others have set out to do.

Trying to word this carefully because the goal is to call folks in to remind us that colonial empire has never had our best interests at heart, and after 600 years maybe it's ok for us to try working in coalition with the folks technocracy is exploiting rather than with the colonial capitalists.

The enlightenment will always be a dead end for Indigenous existence, futures, and flourishing because it missed the forest for the trees. We traffic in forests and interbeing. We can dream bigger than "settler politics of recognition" (Coulthard 2014) in systems of necropolitics (Mbembe). We must.

Nobody would say we should 'Indigenize' the exploitation of workers in the global South. But when we yoke our futures to technocracy, we miss the point that our job should be to build that new man -- against empire -- with the global majority. Our work is with the oppressed, not the oppressors.

The moment requires more than reconciliation or relativism. It requires taking stock of how middle class visions of the future -- including the visions of some Indigenous academics+folks in colonial institutions - can reproduce systems of harm that are laying waste to Earth even if 'Indigenised'.

As Fanon warned us at the end of Wretched of the Earth: "we must not send them back a reflection, however ideal, of their society and their thought that periodically sickens even them...we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavour to create a new man". (2005[1961]:240).

AI is built on same logics, sciences, political frameworks that built nuclear war. In fact, one of the earliest electronic computers was used to calculate parameters for the hydrogen bomb. We must be careful what worldviews+paradigms Fanon's 'colonised petit bourgeoisie' normalises as 'liberation'.

It's wild that we're encouraged to embrace 'Indigenous AI', but imagine if I phrased it as 'Indigenous nuclear war'. "Indigenising" is not the same as decolonising or abolishing systems of harm. Fanon (1961) warned us the native/colonized petit bourgeoisie would align with capital + empire.

Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏

Metin Seven (Moon Child's dad 🌝)@seven.eurosky.social · 2w ago

Raffi you’re so right

Really want to get together in public today and cry about the climate somewhere in Toronto.

If you’re feeling the wildfire smoke in Toronto today, and want a way of understanding it through the body and the senses (and connect it to the broader polycrisis of colonial modernity), have a look at the last chapter of my PhD dissertation. yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/9c832f...

Contact improv is slowly turning me into the feral woman I was always meant to be.

Not everything has to be a research project. What a concept!

Designation protects the building, not the operator. It's a demolition control, not a lease. You'll end up with a heritage-listed shell, the structure saved, the venue gone. Which is why upzoning does more for venues than listing does: supply relieves the rent pressure that displaces them.

Gabe Blanc@gabeblanc.bsky.social · last mo.

Sneaky Dee’s is saved. Now what? This is a win for everyone who showed up. But a bank stopping a demolition isn’t policy. Zoning forces development onto major streets, venues get insufficient support, and Sneaky Dee’s still has no heritage status. Demand systemic change.

Today during my eye exam my optometrist said I have myopia because my eyes are very long and the light doesn’t hit the optic nerve quite right and that’s so beautiful and poetic. I can’t see in the distance because my eyes are too long and doesn’t catch the light right.

This @staceyshick.bsky.social piece is sad bit but also *motivating*, I would think. The one incredibly accessible and welcoming space I can think of in #Seattle is #KEXP ‘s gathering space (which is currently also serving as a free #WorldCup watch party). I have met so many great new people there.

Stacey Shick@staceyshick.bsky.social · last mo.

Gift link to the story! bloom.bg/4bkbhpe

Ron DeSantis is simply not prepared to take on a group of belligerent Irish dance instructors, no one is more sure of their power and authority on this earth

madeline odent@oldenoughtosay.com · last mo.

In ‘terrible but also funny’ news, the state of Florida is currently beefing with… An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha, aka the world’s largest and oldest governing body for Irish Dance because the NA championships are being held in Orlando and CLRG refuses to ban trans girls from competing as girls

🪲 In case you were wondering what BEClimwood-Bugs is all about: The project description is online, you can learn more about the project here: @bexplo.bsky.social @uniulm.bsky.social www.biodiversity-exploratories.de/en/projects/...

Effects of climate and land use on arthropod biodiversity in deadwood – Biodiversity Exploratories

biodiversity-exploratories.de

It’s long been important for universities like Columbia and UMass with histories of campus unrest to sanitize older protest traditions as positive proof of their “engagement“ with the world while doing everything to prevent protests against their current policies from happening.

What‘s the evidence that students are not 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 engaging in “meaningful, difficult conversations” without the assistance of these right-wing initiatives? The goal is to control conversations so they don’t threaten the entrenched interests, like big tech, that rely on universities as profit centers

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · last mo.

Alice Speri (@alicesperi.bsky.social) of @theguardian.com once again covering the actual story of what’s happening in HigherEd.

The Streisand Effect, Marx and Engels edition.

dog shit country, truly

DR Congo superfan denied US visa to support team at World Cup

Michel Kuka Mboladinga is iconic for his motionless tribute at DRC games, but a US World Cup repeat has been denied.

aljazeera.com