Despite the constant #mainstreaming hype, the branding, and the trillions of dollars being poured into it, there is a simple reality that needs to be stated plainly: There is no intelligence in current “AI”, and there is no working path from today’s Large Language Models (#LLM) and Machine Learning (#ML) systems to anything resembling real, general intelligence.

What we are living through is not an intelligence revolution, it is a bubble - one we’ve seen many times before. The […]

Despite the constant #mainstreaming hype, the branding, and the trillions of dollars being poured into it, there is a simple reality that needs to be stated plainly: There is no intelligence in current “AI”, and there is no working path from today’s Large Language Models (#LLM) and Machine Learning (#ML) systems to anything resembling real, general intelligence.

What we are living through is not an intelligence revolution, it is a bubble - one we’ve seen many times before. The […]

The culture of hopelessness is a deeply conservative reaction to social change and challenge. It is marked by reflexive opposition and inward-looking tribalism, rather than by hope, solidarity, or progress. Instead of imagining alternatives, it retreats into irony and disengagement.

Meme culture and pervasive sarcasm are good examples of this tendency. They often reinforce a narrow, consumerist worldview that feels clever but lacks the power to engage with or transform wider social […]

Putting content into #dotcons creates a feedback loop with diminishing returns. The impact is marginal - and shrinking - because all you are really doing is training #failbook’s algorithms to better sell you, and everyone who interacts with your content, more “stuff.” This includes not just products, but ideology: the subtle shaping of thought, behaviour, and community through algorithmic social control.

It’s very easy to get pulled into a #flamewar on #failbook, because conflict […]

A path to do this is to step away from the #mainstreming mess. In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. The prize recognised their work on how institutions shape prosperity, most famously through their book Why Nations Fail. The timing matters, it matters a lot.

This award lands at exactly the moment we should be asking why Institutional Economics - the respectable face of #mainstreaming - has spent the last fifteen years […]

In our worship of the #deathcult, if you strip away the robes, chants, and charismatic leaders, what remains is behaviour, not belief. A destructive cult is not defined by how strange it sounds, but by what it does to bodies, lives, and futures. This matters because it breaks a common illusion: cults are judged by outcomes, not vibes.

So the real question for our #mainstreaming culture is simple: does this system produce harm through deliberate collective action? If the answer is yes, then […]

Let’s be honest about something we usually skate around. Many of our #fluffy activist friends are not fighting for change. They are fighting for equality of access to the existing system. That system is the #deathcult - growth, extraction, hierarchy, control - and most progressive mainstream activism is about making that worship fairer, nicer, more inclusive. More seats in the temple, better language on the altar, safer rituals for those already kneeling. This is not transformation, it is […]

Meany people lazily see “the Right” in America as a unified political movement, but this is simplistic, comforting fiction. People still see as "normal" what we used to have, an orthodox worship of a #deathcult. But this is tired path is now being overwhelmed by a hard right (populist) rejection, and to add to this mess, this reaction is it itself is captured by meany personal grabs for power and statues, yes it truly is a mess.We need to look at this, it matters, because treating the […]

A path to do this is to step away from the #mainstreming mess. In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. The prize recognised their work on how institutions shape prosperity, most famously through their book Why Nations Fail. The timing matters, it matters a lot.

This award lands at exactly the moment we should be asking why Institutional Economics - the respectable face of #mainstreaming - has spent the last fifteen years […]

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: we fucked up the last 20 years of #openweb tech. Not “they” fucked it up. Not only #BigTech, not only venture capital, not only governments and surveillance states. We did, especially those of us who were closest to the tools, the protocols, the decisions - the geeks, developers, architects, and maintainers who shaped how this stuff actually worked in practice.

That matters, because it means we still have direct power over what happens next. […]

In our worship of the #deathcult, if you strip away the robes, chants, and charismatic leaders, what remains is behaviour, not belief. A destructive cult is not defined by how strange it sounds, but by what it does to bodies, lives, and futures. This matters because it breaks a common illusion: cults are judged by outcomes, not vibes.

So the real question for our #mainstreaming culture is simple: does this system produce harm through deliberate collective action? If the answer is yes, then […]

Let’s be honest about something we usually skate around. Many of our #fluffy activist friends are not fighting for change. They are fighting for equality of access to the existing system. That system is the #deathcult - growth, extraction, hierarchy, control - and most progressive mainstream activism is about making that worship fairer, nicer, more inclusive. More seats in the temple, better language on the altar, safer rituals for those already kneeling. This is not transformation, it is […]

This space has a long history. The #fediverse grew out of the “cats” of libertarianism and, to a lesser extent, anarchism - notably without the (O). That lineage mattered. It shaped the instincts of the space: suspicion of central authority, an emphasis on autonomy, and a belief that technical decentralisation could substitute for social and political process.

I wrote this a few years ago.

Today the landscape has shifted. This #openweb space is increasingly layered with #NGO capture and […]