"In this book, Sidney Dekker sets out to identify the market mechanisms that explain how less government paradoxically leads to greater compliance burdens. This book gives shape and substance to a suspicion that has become widespread among workers in almost every industry: we have to follow more rules than ever-and still, things can go spectacularly wrong."

https://sidneydekker.com/compliance-capitalism

#HatTip to @dtauvdiodr for the reference.

#FreeTrade #FreeMarkets #neoliberalism #corporatism #SidneyDekker

"One thing, it's just going to take a while. These old girls, they've got old software. OK? It's just because that's what the government buys, they go for the cheapest software, that's why everything's crap, and that's why the government's so inefficient. LOL.

Don't quote me on that."

Jeremy, 'Nobody WINZ', 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH23qYXKo-s

#HatTip to @bigblen for the short film link. It's a bit surrealist, but it perfectly captures the Kafkaeque feeling of dealing with WINZ.

#WINZ #GovtIT

"One thing, it's just going to take a while. These old girls, they've got old software. OK? It's just because that's what the government buys, they go for the cheapest software, that's why everything's crap, and that's why the government's so inefficient. LOL.

Don't quote me on that."

Jeremy, 'Nobody WINZ', 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH23qYXKo-s

#HatTip to @bigblen for the short film link. It's a bit surrealist, but it perfectly captures the Kafkaeque feeling of dealing with WINZ.

#WINZ #GovtIT

#Listening to Who Can You Trust? The opening track of the 5 song EP of the same name by Arden and the Wolves, released in 2018;

https://ardenandthewolves.bandcamp.com/album/who-can-you-trust

Hot take; most provocative album cover ever.

#HatTip to Douglas @Rushkoff for introducing me to this band, by interviewing lead singer Ardern Leigh on his Team Human podcast;

https://www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/343-arden-leigh-chasing-the-hungry-ghosts

#music #rock #NewWave #ArdenAndTheWolves

"Advertising executives aren't 'creatives'. It's like calling landlords architects."

#DominicHoey, How to Lose Money

#HatTip to Freak the Sheep for exposing me to this righteous spoken word track.

https://feeds.95bfm.com/link/16767/17208338/freak-the-sheep-w-taylor-mcgregor-november-12-2025

Dominic is also known as Tourettes, maybe that track is here somewhere? Have a dig ...

https://tourettesone.bandcamp.com/

#podcasts #95bFM #FreakTheSheep #music #SpokenWord

#Listening to The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, specifically their 2012 album Twenty Dozen;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_yXkB5eD0

"I'm a dirty old man, and I feel like spanking somebody!"

Yeah, more or less 😁

#HatTip to @nevar23, whose October post linking to the Dozen's Cissy Strut introduced me to this fabulously spicy band.

(1/2)

#music #jazz #funk #brass #DirtyDozenBrassBand

grApple and Goggle vetting developers for the privilege of having their apps available on the iThing and Android OS they control is a protection racket. It's not a legitimate business practice, it's a shakedown. This is not business, it's organised crime, and these tech mafia need to be prosecuted out of existence if they don't stop doing it.

https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schneier-senate-judiciary-regarding-app-store-security

#HatTip to @pluralistic for the link.

“This case targets our rights to protest, speak freely, and associate with anyone who disagrees with this government … I’ve spent my career fighting America’s backwards slide towards fascism and I’m not going to give up now.”

#KatAbughazaleh, 2025

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/29/kat-abughazaleh-indicted-democrat-running-congress

F'n legend. Fight the power Kat.

#HatTip to @theicarian for the link.

#ResistUSFascism

"There were only two people involved in the decision to launch the ARPAnet: my boss, the Director of ARPA Charles Herzfeld, and me. The creation of the ARPAnet was not motivated by considerations of war. The ARPAnet was created to enable folks with common interests to connect with one another through interactive computing even when widely separated by geography.”

#BobTaylor, Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), #DARPA

https://internetmythen.de/en/index0258.html?mythen=myth-15-the-internet-was-invented-by-the-pentagon-and-designed-to-survive-a-nuclear-attack

#HatTip to @nethope for the debunk link

"Someone once told me art is like emotional nutrition.

That made sense to me. Art feeds my feelings.

And if that's the case, consuming AI art is like eating styrofoam."

@oatmeal,

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

#HatTip to @lightweight for the link.

#MOLE #AI #AIArt

#HatTip to philosopher Catherine Malibou, and the Disintegrator podcast, whose interview with Malibou clued me on to the existence of plastic chips.

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/34-spirit-w-catherine-malabou--67301230

#podcasts #Disintegrator #CatherineMalibou #PlasticChips

(3/3)

#HatTip to philosopher Catherine Malibou, and the Disintegrator podcast, whose interview with Malibou clued me on to the existence of plastic chips.

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/34-spirit-w-catherine-malabou--67301230

#podcasts #Disintegrator #CatherineMalibou #PlasticChips

(3/3)

"No wealthy democracy with nuclear weapons has ever fallen to fascism. The 1930s examples everyone cites were broken countries. Weimar Germany was weakened by World War I and hyperinflation. Italy was barely industrialized. Spain was largely agrarian. They didn’t have the world’s reserve currency. They didn’t have thousands of nukes. They didn’t have surveillance technology that would make the Stasi weep with envy."

#ChrisArmitage, 2025

https://scribe.rip/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-stop-fascism-in-history-the-success-rate-is-0-a665e2e048a2

1/2

#HatTip @jackyan for link

"Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision was formed by the amalgamation of the New Zealand Film Archive Ngā Kaitiaki O Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua, Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero, and the Television New Zealand Archive between 2012 and 2014."

https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/about-us/who-we-are/about-nga-taonga-sound-vision/#our-story

#HatTip to the audio-visual archivists, helping to defend us all from the Ministry of Truth and the memory hole, one recording at a time : )

#AudioVisual #archiving#NgāTaonga#NZFilmArchive#NZSoundArchives#TVNZ

#HatTip to the Water Pressure Group in Tamaki Makaurau, as a notable example of the grassroots anti-corporatisation campaigns of the nineties and noughties. They engaged in a bunch of nonviolent direct action to resist the commercialisation of public water supplies, and networked with other "water warriors" around in the word. I vividly remember the retired fire engines they bought to protests;

https://natlib.govt.nz/records/30781104

https://archive.is/zqcAS

#activism #PublicService #WaterPressureGroup

"... the Florida Attorney General’s office has subpoenaed a local restaurant, The Kilted Mermaid, demanding surveillance video, guest lists, reservation logs, and contracts of performers and other staff—all because the venue hosted an LGBTQ+ Pride event."

#RindalaAlajaji, 2025

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/you-went-drag-show-now-state-florida-wants-your-name

Well that sounds like Stasi-era "Communism" more than any kind of liberty or democracy.

#HatTip to @emma for the link and @silentLurker for the boost that brought it to my attention.

"Groups emphasize shared infrastructures, hardware longevity, free software, and collective approaches. Challenges include dominant narratives about “unlimited resources,” limited time to experiment, centralized infrastructures and lack of repairable hardware. Challenges include dominant narratives about 'unlimited resources,' limited time to experiment, centralized infrastructures and lack of repairable hardware."

@mayfirst, 2025

https://mayfirst.coop/en/post/2025/justicia-ambiental-infra/

#HatTip to @ntnsndr for the link.

(2/2)

In fact, I don't even know if it always makes sense for Home to be the default. For new accounts, it would be better for Local or Federated to be default, with the follow-all firehose introduced in the interface upon first follow. Progressive disclosure FTW!

#HatTip to @tchambers, whose recent piece on fediverse UX got me thinking along these lines

https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/24/the-seven-deadly-fediverse-ux.html

#FediverseIdeas

"Groups emphasize shared infrastructures, hardware longevity, free software, and collective approaches. Challenges include dominant narratives about “unlimited resources,” limited time to experiment, centralized infrastructures and lack of repairable hardware. Challenges include dominant narratives about 'unlimited resources,' limited time to experiment, centralized infrastructures and lack of repairable hardware."

@mayfirst, 2025

https://mayfirst.coop/en/post/2025/justicia-ambiental-infra/

#HatTip to @ntnsndr for the link.

Hell no. That thing is kryptonite for an ADHDer trying to focus on one thing. I mainly use Android apps (FediLab for a long time, more recently Moshidon), sometimes web apps (#HatTip to Enafore.social), and very occasionally a desktop app (Tuba on GNU/Linux).

I use vanilla Mastodon so little that if you were able to swap it out for Akkoma, I wouldn't notice until I went to post a freudian typo : P