In the latest episode of The Comfortable Spot podcast, my guest is author and social anthropologist Brian Milne. We discuss the current state of rights of children in conflict and ask whether our modern societies have become desensitized to their suffering.
#ChildAbuse #childslavery #childrights #UN #RightsOfTheChild #Palestine #Ukraine
thecomfortablespotpodcast.com/…
Brian Milne
Lost Childhoods: Conflict, Migration, and the Fight for Children’s Rights with Brain Milne Apple Spotify Amazon Linktree Today, I’m joined by author and academic Brian Milne. Brian is a socia…The Comfortable Spot Podcast
Ray Nayler's *Where the Axe Is Buried* is an intense, claustrophobic novel of a world run by "rational" AIs that purport to solve all of our squishy political problems with empirical, neutral mathematics:
us.macmillan.com/books/9780374…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2025/03/birchp…
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Book details - Macmillan Publishers
All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who ...Macmillan
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Data breach at stalkerware SpyX affects close to 2 million, including thousands of Apple users
Data breach at stalkerware SpyX affects close to 2 million, including thousands of Apple users | TechCrunch
Another consumer-grade spyware operation was hacked in June 2024, which exposed thousands of Apple Account credentials.Zack Whittaker (TechCrunch)
What's this about a crypto reserve? : The Indicator from Planet Money
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/1239646557/crypto-bitcoin-government-trump?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Business @business-npr
Sesame Street : Throughline
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/1239646567/throughline-sesame-street?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Arts & Life @arts-life-npr
Happy Thursday to one and all. 🤗
It’s International Day of Happiness, which aims to highlight the importance of happiness within our lives.
In my A-Z of simple steps to a better world, step J is ‘Journey Jovial’, which includes some methods anyone can adopt to try to bring more happiness in to their lives: ethicalrevolution.co.uk/journe…
In particular it highlights methods of breaking free from the negative 24 hour news cycle that can lock us in to perpetual states of anxiety.
This year’s #InternationalDayOfHappiness theme is ‘Sharing and Caring’ - both of which also feature in my A-Z steps:
🤲 Sharing:
ethicalrevolution.co.uk/share-…
🫂 Caring:
ethicalrevolution.co.uk/know-k…
Journey Jovial - Ethical Revolution
Join me in taking step J, “Journey Jovial”, in the A-Z of simple steps to a better world: Don’t let the bastards grind you down!Ethical Revolution
AxWax reshared this.
NEVER FORGET this evergreen quote from Pierre Poilievre:
"Former residential school students need a stronger work ethic, not more compensation dollars."
That's REAL prime ministerial material right there, folks. Another whitey telling Indigenous people what's good for them.
I see the tough guy approach is going well.
❝ Today, when the phone call [with Trump] was scheduled, Putin was on stage at an event. When his interviewer asked if he needed to go because he would be late for the call, Putin dismissed the question and laughter broke out. Brett Bruen, president of the Global Situation Room public relations firm wrote: “Making leaders wait is an old Putin power play. But, this is pretty brutal. Putin is publicly mocking Trump.” ❞
So the 4chan trolls #MAGA sadists have put in charge of the #DoD website have gone after #JackieRobinson
People with more than 2 braincells knew attacking #DEI was just a stand in for simple #racism all along
So now what. Now that #bigots are just openly bigots and no one with even 1 braincell can deny it without being laughed at, now what
We just let our honored heroes be pissed on by MAGA turds and we shrug? Forget about it? Accept it?
This country is a fucking joke
doesn't matter
they're laughing the whole time. they knew it would not stand. the point is to push with radioactive racist shit to elicit pain
because it's funny to them
the Trump administration is literally internet trolls. it's the back of the 4th grade class saying something outrageously ugly by design to be gleeful when the teacher gets upset
our fucking GOVERNMENT
then we forget about it, and next election go "HURR DURR EGG PRICES... *snort*"
americans are fucking morons
So, science friends.
When in the 1930s would you have decided “no, I’m not going to go to that conference in Germany”?
Because the question now needs to be posed looking westwards across the Atlantic.
If your phone can be taken on arrival & searched for messages critical of the government & then you can be denied entry (or perhaps worse in the future), why would you even think of going in the first place?
Absolutely horrifying slide into totalitarianism.
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m…
French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found
France’s research minister said the scientist was traveling to Houston for a conference when his phone was searchedRobert Mackey (The Guardian)
#Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner is stepping down after #DOGE leader #ElonMusk called for the #transit service to be #privatized.
Amtrak, also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, is the national passenger #rail service for the #US. It is nationally chartered, meaning the federal government is the majority stockholder. It also means Amtrak board members are nominated by the president & confirmed by the Senate.
independent.co.uk/news/world/a…
Amtrak CEO steps down as Musk insists ‘sad’ rail service needs to be privatized
Stephen Gardner left position to ‘ensure that Amtrak continues to enjoy the full faith and confidence of this administration’Katie Hawkinson (The Independent)
"Top Tesla investor issues brutal ultimatum to Elon Musk as boycott leads to major stock plunge
Ross Gerber, who owns an estimated $105 million in shares of Tesla stock, called on Elon Musk to step down as head of the company, saying that he 'destroyed' the company's reputation"
By Alana Loftus, Boston reporter
08:20 ET, MAR 19 2025
Updated10:58 ET, MAR 19 2025
irishstar.com/news/us-news/elo…
Top Tesla investor issues brutal ultimatum to Elon Musk as stocks plunge
Ross Gerber, who owns an estimated $105 million in shares of Tesla stock, called on Elon Musk to step down as head of the company, saying that he "destroyed" the company's reputationIrish Star
reshared this
G.
Cheese and wine, a party table with a selection of cheeses and wines, a basket of sliced bread, cheese knife, wine glasses with red and white wines poured.
[ Prints : james-mccormack.pixels.com/fea… ]
#cheese #wine #party #bread #FediGiftShop #wineglasses #BuyIntoArt #redandwhite #red #white #MastoDaoine #MastoArt
Chess masters and physicists show how expertise, not innate talent, enables flexible thinking. For evaluating online info, that means knowing #history and civics.
A scholar explains: theconversation.com/why-histor…
@academicchatter #academicchatter @psychology
Why history instruction is critical for combating online misinformation
Critical thinking involves specific skills for assessing evidence, but background knowledge about the subject is also essential.The Conversation
I post memes like these as a way to feel connected to the people who I care the most about.
Let's all be good to each other!
20 March 1933 | A French Jewish girl, Freda Rojzner, was born in Paris.
She was deported to Auschwitz in February 1944 and murdered in a gas chamber.
Colorado senator on Schumer: 'It's important for people to know when it's time to go'
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/g-s1-54852/colorado-senator-michael-bennet-town-hall-schumer?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Politics @politics-npr
HOBO SYMBOLS:
Almost from the beginning of the existence of hoboes, as early as the 1870s, it was reported that they communicated with each other by way of a system of cryptic "hobo signs", which would be chalked in prominent or relevant places to clandestinely alert future hoboes about important local information.
Here are the best tings to see and do: backpackandsnorkel.com/Atacama…
The best things to see in Chile's Atacama Desert - Chile Purple Guide
Chile's Atacama desert is one of the world's highest elevation deserts. It has neverending slat flats, clear night skies ideal for stargazing, the world's highest elevation geysers and a lagoon where you can float on water similar to the dead sea.backpackandsnorkel.com
"Every evening, a maid went from the castle on the Reußenberg mountain to the spinning chamber in Sodenberg, which was half an hour away. In order to get there and back again faster, she made a pact with the Devil."
— Alexander Schöppner: Sagenbuch der bayerischen Lande. Erster Band, p. 257
Those commutes can be a killer.
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
In Naylor's world, we there are two blocs. "The west," where the heads of state have been replaced with chatbots called "PMs." These PMs propose policy to tame, rubberstamp legislatures, creating jobs programs, setting monetary and environmental policies, and ruling on other tricky areas where it's nearly impossible to make everyone happy.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
These countries are said to be "rationalized," and they are peaceful and moderately prosperous, and have finally tackled the seemingly intractable problems of decarbonization, extreme poverty, and political instability.
In "the Republic" - a thinly veiled version of Russia - the state is ruled by an immortal tyrant who periodically has his consciousness decanted into a blank body after his own body falls apart.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The state maintains the fiction that each president is a new person, manufacturing families, friends, teachers and political comrades who can attest to the new president's long history in the country. People in the Republic pretend to believe this story, but in practice, everyone knows that it's the same mind running the country, albeit sometimes with ill-advised modifications, such as an overclocking module that runs the president's mind at triple human speeds.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The Republic is a totalitarian nightmare of ubiquitous surveillance and social control, in which every movement and word is monitored, and where social credit scores are adjusted continuously to reflect the political compliance of each citizen. Low social credit scores mean fewer rations, a proscribed circle of places you can go, reduced access to medical care, and social exclusion.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The Republic has crushed every popular uprising, acting on the key realization that the only way to cling to power is to refuse to yield it, even (especially) if that means murdering every single person who takes part in a street demonstration against the government.
By contrast, the western states with their chatbot PMs are more open - at least superficially.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
However, the "rationalized" systems use less obvious - but no less inescapable - soft forms of control that limit the social mobility, career chances, and moment-to-moment and day-to-day lives of the people who live there.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
As one character who ventures from the Republic to London notes, it is a strange relief to be continuously monitored by cameras there to keep you safe and figure out how to manipulate you into buying things, rather than being continuously monitored by cameras seeking a way to punish you.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The tale opens on the eve of the collapse of these two systems, as the current president of the Republic's body starts to reject the neural connectome that was implanted into its vat-grown brain, even as the world's PMs start to sabotage their states, triggering massive civil unrest that brings the west to its knees, one country after another.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This is the backdrop for a birchpunk* tale of AI skulduggery, lethal robot insects, radical literature, swamp-traversing mechas, and political intrigue that flits around a giant cast of characters, creating a dizzying, in-the-round tour of Nayler's paranoid world.
* Russian-inflected cyberpunk with Baba Yaga motifs and nihilistic Russian novel vibes
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
And what a paranoid world it is! Nayler's world shows two different versions of Oracle boss (and would-be Tiktok owner) Larry Ellison, who keeps pumping his vision of an AI-driven surveillance state where everyone is continuously observed, recorded and judged by AIs so we are all on our "best behavior":
fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-…
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Larry Ellison predicts rise of the modern surveillance state where ‘citizens will be on their best behavior’
Christiaan Hetzner (Fortune)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This batshit idea from one of tech's worst billionaires is a perfect foil for a work of first-rate science fiction like *Where the Axe Is Buried*, which provides an emotional flythrough of how such a world would obliterate the authentic self, authentic relationships, and human happiness.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
*Where the Axe Is Buried* conjures up that world beautifully, really capturing the deadly hopelessness of a life where the order is fixed for all eternity, thanks to the flawless execution of perfect, machine-generated power plays. But *Axe* shows how the embers of hope smolder long after they should have been extinguished, and how they are always ready to be kindled into a roaring, system-consuming wildfire.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.
Catch me in SAN DIEGO next MONDAY (Mar 24):
mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow
And in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2:
exileinbookville.com/events/44…
More tour dates here:
martinhench.com
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Authors on Tap: Cory Doctorow and Peter Sagal
exileinbookville.com