← Feed

Posts

• Post #4139676

  It's 19 C today in Johannesburg. NINETEEN DEGREES

• Post #3970199

  A pet peeve: LLMs do not "democratise intelligence." They commodify it. Democratising something means that everyone has the same access to it regardless of how much money and power they have. Commodifying something means that you can buy as much of it as you can afford. You have to be really far gone to confuse the two.

• Post #3589276

  There's a few pictures currently going around of a group of Patriot Front fascist paramilitaries on Washington DC public transport. A lot of people are worried by this. Some have talked at length about their worries. As someone who spends a certain amount of time in black bloc, let me talk you through some things I haven't seen said about these pictures but that I think are very relevant.

• Post #3575315

  New Zealand v France is a good game so far. France have really embraced a good running game rather than constantly kicking like a stereotype of Northern Hemisphereans.

• Post #3477150

  London peeps, please retoot, and if you can attend then it'll be cool to see you. - - - Everyone is invited to *Cooperation Day 2026* on *Sat, 4 July, 11am-5pm* (various sessions) at Coop Town Hub in Camden. We will look at all the different ways we can improve our lives through collective ownership, at work, around housing and in the community + build political power for cooperation. Free tickets on https://dandelion.events/e/cooperation-day-2026. Lunch & childcare provided.

• Post #3160665

  RIP John Blanche, Marjane Satrapi, Anthony Head. I was thinking about this and was struck by the thought that there have been far more deaths of nice people than of awful ones, and this is a reminder that there *are* far more nice people than awful ones. The bad may be loud and powerful but they're also outnumbered.

• Post #3013789

  London peeps: This is a TEFL Workers Union picket organised with the IWW. Please pass it on, and if you want to come you'd be welcome.

• Post #2246688

  Lazyweb question for literature people, boosts welcome: Cervantes' book Don Quixote is often called the first novel. Fiction writing certainly existed before that, but the novel form is a specific subset of fiction writing, and would have had a start. In a similar way, what was the first short story?

• Post #1935554

  For those who don't read Francophone social media, there is currently hilarity. Jordan Bardella, a fascist and the probable next president, has tweeted that "when all seemed lost, Jeanne d'Arc lit a fire. We as a nation must do likewise." Given what happened to Jeanne d'Arc, this is pretty funny.

• Post #1858064

  Retiring the giant foam hand that says "we're #27" in favour of one that says "we're #21." https://rsf.org/en/country/south-africa (We have been improving, which is good, but mostly the rest of the world has been declining, which is not so good. This is the problem with ranking these things like it's a competitive tournament.)

• Post #1848371

  I am writing this on Tusky, which is free software that someone had to write. It is running on an older Android phone, which someone had to assemble from components that other people had to make from raw materials that still other people had to produce. You are reading this because it was transmitted via a sophisticated international communications system which someone had to design and someone else had to make from raw materials that someone else had to produce. The electricity also had to be...

• Post #1464659

  "There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach." - The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien Astronomy is antifascist.

• Post #1377022

  I want to give a shoutout to an often-underappreciated group of people: extremely stupid people with hearts of gold who have no idea about theory or ideology or anything but are solidly Leftist nonetheless.

• Post #1377021

  @designthinkingcomic Welcome back!

• Post #1096447

  Pretty sure I was having a drink with every 20 year old in California at the time. It can't have been them. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/10/openai-ceo-sam-altmans-home-targeted-in-molotov-cocktail-attack

• Post #987940

  No matter how awful a president we South Africans elect, no matter how despicable his beliefs are, he cannot nuke anyone. This is because we chose to get rid of all of our nuclear weapons in the late 1980s, inviting in foreign inspectors in 1991 to certify that we had no stockpile and no ability to create one. South Africa is a long way from perfect but we are the only people in the world democratic enough to have rid ourselves of weapons of mass destruction, and thereby limited the powers of a...

• Post #960954

  Anyone who does not spend all day every day watching Coca-Cola ads, reading kpop stan twitter and browsing incel buildmaxxing forums is: A) A sensible person. B) Living in a filter bubble, and making their life far richer as a result. C) Ceding all right to complain about other people's filter bubbles.

• Post #712576

  (Please boost for wider views) Of all the books you own, what's the one which a) you have never read, and b) is least likely out of all your books to ever be read, but c) you're unlikely to get rid of? Mine: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.