> ... roughly $1 billion per year on programs that subsidize the purchase of commercial seeds and fertilizers. There is little publicly available documentation of impacts, from AGRA, the Gates Foundation, or donor governments that have supported the initiative. This paper attempts to fill some of that accountability gap. Because AGRA declined to provide data from its own monitoring and evaluation, we use national-level data to assess progress in productivity, poverty reduction, and food security in AGRA’s 13 countries. We find little evidence of widespread progress on any of AGRA’s goals, which is striking given the high levels of government subsidies for technology adoption. There is no evidence AGRA is reaching a significant number of smallholder farmers. Productivity has increased just 29% over 12 years for maize, the most subsidized and supported crop. This falls well short of doubling yields, which would be a 100% increase. Overall staple crop yields have grown only 18% over 12 years. Meanwhile, undernourishment (as measured by the FAO) has increased 30% in AGRA countries. These poor indicators of performance suggest that AGRA and its funders should change course. We review more promising approaches African governments and donors should consider.
sites.tufts.edu/gdae/files/202…
#GatesInAfrica #TimWise #AGRA #BillionDollarPolicyMistake #GatesBillionDollarMistake #BillGates #BillionDollarMistake ?
> According to an external assessment by Timothy A. Wise of Tufts University, severe hunger in AGRA countries increased by 30% between AGRA’s founding and 2018. Crop yield increases have been modest, and where they exist, they haven’t always been enough to cover the higher cost of farming with commercial seeds and agricultural inputs. Dependence on fertilizer has increased the debt and financial precarity of the small farmers who make up the majority of farmers in Africa. In some cases the limited yield increases have also been temporary, as soil fertility has diminished due to monoculture farming and fertilizer use. For instance, Ethiopian farmers “will say that the soil is corrupted, meaning it cannot produce food” without synthetic fertilizer, reports Million Belay of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).
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> Daniel Maingi, coordinator for the Kenya Food Rights Alliance, believes the Gates Foundation, working with its corporate partners, now has a license to test out new technologies in Kenya—with impunity— under the banner of charity...
> .. “Kenya becomes the testing ground…That is a big, big concern. It’s a big red flag.”..
> “In terms of food sovereignty, as we give Gates these privileges and immunities, Africa is going to be——not food sovereign, not seed sovereign—- we’re going to be slaves and masters of the big corporations,” Maingi told me.
timschwab.substack.com/p/diplo…
#GatesInAfrica #FarmingInAfrica #BigAgInAfrica #GatesFoundation #AGRA
> Although AGRA and other actors, such as the German government, have publicly stated that they are unaware of any cases of indebtedness of farmers participating in AGRA projects, the Ghana evaluation cites this problem very specifically. Farmers consider the AGRA approach extremely risky. There is substantial evidence showing that when harvests are poor, farmers regularly fall into debt. Farmers from Ghana said that even with good yields, they have to spend over 80 percent of their harvest income paying suppliers for seed and fertilizer. Others even question whether this model is worthwhile at all.
Racket Slideshow Japanese Poems
It was a good exercise to make slides that show Japanese characters going from top to bottom and the lines going from right to left.
都城の詩人、 富松良夫は「南九州の宮沢賢治」と呼ばれているようです。興味深い人です。
The motivation for the exercise came from last week's opportunity to see a talk about a local poet. Paul Goodman wrote somewhere about the importance of “incidental poetry.” His example was the dedication of a local monument or park. The comment about incidental poetry came to mind again when the speaker said that the local poet Tomimatu Yoshia wrote the local school's song. The writers Ueno Hidenobu and Kawahara Kazuyuki are known for singing a school song by Miyazawa Kenji.
Unless I get a chance to read Practical Typography (by the writer who also did Beautiful Racket)the troubles with punctuation will make me display these poems with html and css3. But in the meantime this code works for the contemplation of simple Japanese poems on a screen.
I had to write an extra utility, character->string and then kept acclimating myself to naming conventions with string-separate. It was while working on these poems that I saw the similarities among the empty list '() and (blank 0) along with cons and vc-append . There never seems to be a need for iteration loops once you get used to recursive procedures, aux or helper functions, and accumulator or keep expressions. Maybe I can use this approach as part of a Ogden's Basic English-style approach to a Basic Scheme (or Basic Racket) that gives humanities students the most widely useful expressions for programming tasks on computers.
code
#! /usr/bin/env racket
#lang slideshow
(define poem-list '("秋と霧島.txt" "山によせて.txt" "秋.txt" "呼ぶ.txt"))
;;(define poem-list (vector->list (current-command-line-arguments)))
;; slideshow: expects [<slide-module-file>] on the command line, given 2 arguments: 秋と霧島.txt 山によせて.txt
;; text-imput
(define text-file (car poem-list))
(define (str->path str)
(build-path (current-directory-for-user) str))
(define (get-text str)
(define inp (open-input-file (str->path str)))
(port->string inp))
;; slideshow settings
(define text-size 30)
;;(define t-style (cons 'italic 'roman))
(define t-style 'roman)
(define (char-style s)
(text s t-style text-size))
(define (character->string c)
(list->string (list c)))
(define (string-separate s)
(map character->string
(string->list s)))
(define (text-ttb s) ; top to bottom
(define l (string-separate s))
(define (helper str-chrs kept-pics)
(cond
((empty? str-chrs) kept-pics)
((string=? "、" (car str-chrs))
(helper (cdr str-chrs) (vc-append kept-pics
(rotate (char-style (car str-chrs))
(/ pi 1)) )))
((string=? "-" (car str-chrs))
(helper (cdr str-chrs) (vc-append kept-pics
(vline 1 90))))
; (rotate (char-style "---")
; (/ pi 2)) )))
;; later to string=? "(" and ")"
(#t (helper (cdr str-chrs) (vc-append kept-pics
(char-style (car str-chrs)))))))
(helper (string-separate s) (blank 0)))
(define title-body-gap (blank 40))
(define sect-sect-gap (blank 20))
(define line-line-gap (blank 12))
(define (text-ttb-rtl s) ; right to left
(define sl (string-split s "\n"))
(define p-title (car sl))
(define p-body (cdr sl))
(define (helper p-lines kept-pics)
(cond
((empty? p-lines) kept-pics)
((= 0 (string-length (car p-lines)))
(helper (cdr p-lines) (ht-append sect-sect-gap kept-pics)))
(#t (helper (cdr p-lines)
(ht-append
(ht-append line-line-gap (text-ttb (car p-lines)))
kept-pics)))))
(helper p-body (ht-append title-body-gap (text-ttb p-title))))
#;(define Kirishima-Poem
(get-text text-file))
(define (make-slide str)
(define poem (get-text str))
(slide
(text-ttb-rtl poem)))
(map make-slide poem-list)
#;(slide
(text-ttb-rtl Kirishima-Poem))Poems
呼ぶ.txt
呼ぶ - 亡き妹に
冬ぞらの 雲のはてなる死
かすかなるほのほでもあらば
かえてくるにいいときだ
凍てついた白い椿
そなたが残していった たったひとりの僕秋.txt
秋
銀河はるばる帯にまいて
あの人は嫁入ってしまった
桔梗いろの封筒が
きれぎれな雲影を封じてよこした山によせて.txt
山によせて
ひかりの箭をはなつ朝
山は霧のなかに生れ
むらさきの山体は
こんじきの匂ひをもつ
あたらしい日を信じ
あたらしい世界のきたるを信じ
にんげんの哀しさも
国の面する悲運のかげも
世界の精神的下降の現実も
わすれはてるわけではないが
いまこのあざやかな
朝のひかりにおぼれ
悠々と非情の勁さにそびえている
山にまなぼう秋と霧島.txt
秋と霧島
風に洗われるので
山も痩せてきた
おまえも旅人、 わたしも旅人
空にいんえいのない深い時がきた
その胸のうちには冷たい水
口にふくむのはわたしひとり
岩石をななめに削り
掘っても掘っても炎にはとどかぬ
ここは山のもろ腰だ
もう少しわけ入って見よう
しきよくの世界のおそろしさ
純血精のように紅葉の谷
風におそわれるので
山も痩せてきた
ただことでないその痩せかた
だれかのきようの似すがただ
おまえも旅人、 わたし旅人
さっさっと何を急ごう
山膚をなで、 山の根をさすり
わが胸の底の炎は消されはせぬ#Racket #DrRacket #slideshow #poem #poetry #富松良夫 #都城市 #宮崎県 #CKOgden #BasicEnglish #BasicScheme #BasicProgramming
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| 山によせて | Toward the Mountain |
|---|---|
| ひかりの箭をはなつ朝 | The Dawn releases the arrow of light |
| 山は霧のなかに生れ | The Mountain is born in mist |
| むらさきの山体は | The purple mountain body |
| こんじきの匂ひをもつ | has a golden smell |
| あたらしい日を信じ | Believing in a new day |
| あたらしい世界のきたるを信じ | A new world will come I believe |
| にんげんの哀しさも | neither our human sadness |
| 国の面する悲運のかげも | nor the shadow of bad fate over our country |
| 世界の精神的下降の現実も | nor the fact of the world's spiritual descent |
| わすれはてるわけではないが | do I forget but |
| いまこのあざやかな | now, in this clear |
| 朝のひかりにおぼれ | morning's light drowning |
| 悠々と非情の勁さにそびえている | to calmly rise in cruel strength |
| 山にまなぼう | learn from the mountain. |
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> We hear a lot about what democracy means in America. In the case of the Cheri Honkala Green Party campaign for Sheriff of Philadelphia, what democracy means is recognizing that the selective enforcement of laws is a reality in our history and, then, offering voters the real choice of a sheriff who will not enforce foreclosure orders in a depressed economy. Honkala is a well-known poor people's activist in Philadelphia who, over the years, has organized large street demonstrations and even gotten herself arrested many times occupying homes and doing other actions to call attention to the plight of the poor.
- truthout.org/articles/philadel…
#PhiladelphiaSheriff #CheriHonkala #USASheriffs #uspol
"I shot the sheriff" --- Bob Marley (then, later Eric Clapton)
*The Balad of Gregorio Cortez* movie: It's a mare. Es una yegua buey!!
In many places - not in all states, but in many states - sheriffs can hire and fire at will. So it's not uncommon to hire relatives. It's a fairly common practice. And that allows them to set policy on all sorts of things. So everything from what people wear in jail - there was a sheriff in Georgia who forced people inside his jail to get up every morning and march around and sing a song about how great the sheriff was.
...
... this tradition persists today, which is why sheriffs among law enforcement officers still have a lot of pay-for-service mechanisms. In many places, for example, landlords pay the sheriff to evict tenants. It's just a flat fee. So among also those things was that they would take people and lease them out to white land owners. They didn't just lease them out for farming. They were sent to mines, to poultry processing plants. In Florida, they were sent to collect tar in the Everglades. And I think it can't be understated just how dangerous and violent convict leasing was.
bsmall2 reshared this.
... I happen to have a platform for some reason, and then it is my moral obligation to use that platform. And if my presence on this boat can make a difference, if that can show in any way that the world has not forgotten about Palestine, and to try once again to attempt to break the siege and open up a humanitarian corridor and deliver the extremely needed humanitarian aid, then that is a risk I am willing to take....We cannot just sit, sit around and do nothing and watch this like live-streamed genocide unfold in front of our very eyes. So we are doing this because we are human beings who care about justice. And when our complicit governments fail to step up, it falls on us, unfortunately, to do so....
We cannot have climate justice without social justice. The reason why I am a climate activist is not because I want to protect trees. I’m a climate activist because I care about human and planetary well-being, and those are extremely interlinked. For example, when we see the genocide in Gaza, of course, there are some very obvious links, that ecocide, environmental destruction is a very common method used in war and to oppress people...
AMY GOODMAN: Greta, as you attempt to bring in baby formula, medical kits, flour, prosthetics for kids with amputations, the Israeli military has threatened to block the Freedom Flotilla. The Israeli army says it’s prepared to raid your ship. We know what happened to the Mavi Marmara with the Israeli raid and the killing of nine activists on board. Ultimately, a 10th died. So, are you seeing drones? How are you prepared to deal?
GRETA THUNBERG: Yeah, yeah, we are seeing drones. Last night, there were two different moments where there were drones circulating above us. And we are — we have safety procedures that we will use, and we have different scenarios that we are prepared for to try to maximize our safety in a nonviolent way. So, we are trying to do our very best. And it shows quite a bit that peaceful volunteers who are carrying humanitarian aid necessary for survival is being threatened to be raided, intercepted or attacked. I think that says quite a lot about the priorities and approaches of Israel right now.
But we must also remember that this mission is not about us. It is not about the voyage or the people on board. This mission is about Palestine. It is about the genocide, the occupation, ethnic cleansing and the other methods of war and oppression that are being used by Israel against the Palestinians. And we do not only need humanitarian aid to be let into Gaza. We do not only need a ceasefire. We need an end to the occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: — South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham wrote on X, “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” Your response?
GRETA THUNBERG: We can swim very well. It says a lot about their priorities, that in the face of genocide and systematic starvation of 2 million people, lawmakers, elected officials, whose responsibility should be to serve the people and to protect the people, that they, rather than ending their complicity in genocide and the massive slaughtering of civilians, are focusing on mocking people who are at least trying to do their bit. I think that says everything we need to know about their priorities.
democracynow.org/2025/6/4/gret…
#AmyGoodman #GretaThunberg #FreedomFlotilla #GazaGenocide #TheMadleen
Greta Thunberg Speaks from Aid Ship Heading to Gaza Despite Israeli Threats: It’s My Moral Obligation
As Gaza faces over three months of Israeli blockade, a group of 12 activists is sailing to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.Democracy Now!
> The Anti-Defamation League calls Mack’s organization an “anti-government extremist group,” while he prefers to invoke Barry Goldwater’s 1964 battle cry: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” Since founding the group in 2011, Mack estimates it has trained at least 800 sheriffs. Agencies in several states, including Texas and Virginia, have allowed officers to use these events for professional education credits....
> Over his long, peripatetic career, Mack has learned to persuade people: He’s been a car salesman, high school history teacher, reality show contestant (on the 2004 season of Showtime’s “American Candidate”), recruiter (for Gun Owners of America) and unsuccessful entrant into Republican primaries for governor of Utah and congressperson from Texas....
> In a 2019 study, political scientist Zoe Nemerever found that the presence of a sheriff with “Constitutionalist” views was associated with a higher likelihood of violent confrontation between their constituents and federal Bureau of Land Management employees. “Who has been violent in our country?” Mack told me. “The federal government has, quite often.”
Facebook’s internal conclusions echo a number of studies that implicate social media in an epidemic of mental health problems among young people. In 2017, YoungMinds and the Royal Society for Public Health published research singling out Instagram as having the most negative impact on young people’s mental wellbeing of all social networks. Emma Thomas, the charity’s chief executive, said that while social media could be beneficial, it also came with increased pressures.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
#FBBodyImage #MetaBodyImage #IGBodyImage #TeensSNS #BodyImageSNS #MentalHealthSNS
Facebook aware of Instagram’s harmful effect on teenage girls, leak reveals
Social media firm reportedly kept own research secret that suggests app worsens body image issuesDamien Gayle (The Guardian)
bsmall2 reshared this.
🧵
> A spokesperson for 5Rights Foundation, which campaigns for changes to digital services to make them more suitable for children and young people, said: “Facebook’s own research is a devastating indictment of the carelessness with which it, and the tech sector more broadly, treats children
#5RigthsFoundation #DigitalServices #FB #Facebook #MetaCorporation
#DigitalRegulation #CommercialRegulation #ProfitRegulation
@bsmall2@writing.exchange @bsmall2@nerdica.net
They are embraced by far-right militia groups, white nationalists, the Claremont Institute, and former president Donald Trump, who sees them as allies in mass deportation and border policing.How did a group of law enforcement officers decide that they were “above the law?” What are the stakes for local and national politics, and for America as a multi-racial democracy?
Blending investigative reporting, historical research, and political analysis, author Jessica Pishko takes us to the roots of why sheriffs have become a flashpoint in the current politics of toxic masculinity, guns, white supremacy, and rural resentment, and uncovers how sheriffs have effectively evaded accountability since the nation’s founding.
- penguinrandomhouse.com/books/7…
#JessicaPishko #ConstitutionalSheriffs #spol
The Highest Law in the Land by Jessica Pishko: 9780593471319 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Shortlisted for Columbia Journalism School’s J. Anthony Lukas Award A Publishers Lunch NonFiction Buzz Book| Named Most Anticipated by Los Angeles Tim...PenguinRandomhouse.com
My writing is organic and it always will be. I will never use chatbots to write because the effort is the point. Writing is often hard but it is supposed to be - the point is to sit there, think, read, write, re-write, edit, re-write... The process of thinking and struggle is what creates the work. The connection between people, the communication between writer and reader and vice versa, the message sent from one heart to another - this is what writing is. It is why 'AI' will never write.
- tansyhoskins.org/my-books-have…
#SalamiAI #TansyHoskins #SalamiWriting
/HT @MárciaW
A Jacobin post on Instagram^1 reminded me of this 1930s Bertand Russel writing
... The money spent by the Duke in this merry-making was obtained by taxing grain so heavily that bread was at famine prices, and vast numbers of the poor died of hunger.
A hundred years ago, in a society now extinct, the point of view which puts charity above independence now seems to us grotesque. But in newer forms it still survives and is still politically powerful...
russell-j.com/CHARITY.HTM
> Don’t lose the Madleen [Barcarole]. Track her journey for safety, accountability, and solidarity
freedomflotilla.org/ffc-tracke…
#FreedomFlotilla #MadleenTracker #WestBank #GazaGenocide #Cyprus
Madleen Tracker - Freedom Flotilla
Don’t lose the Madleen [Barcarole]. Track her journey for safety, accountability, and solidarity In partnership with Forensic Architecture, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition has equipped the ‘Madleen’ with an advanced tracking system.Freedom Flotilla
Brian Small reshared this.
🧵 I hadn't noticed Cyprus is so near to Palestine..
> In 1932..
> Think of all those poor fellows dying over there just to teach Americans a little geography...
In 1987
> You know we live in such a pathetic world. It seems as if every year or so there’s another new war breaking out somewhere. There was war in Sri Lanka. War in Beruit. War in Yugoslavia. In Croatia.
> Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.
quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/…
#WarGeography #uspol
@bsmall2@fedibird.com
sfstandard.com/2025/05/29/ice-…
#BluesBrothersReaction #NaziGroups #NaziLikeOrgs #uspol
ICE asks media to blur faces of agents at SF court
ICE asked journalists to blur the faces of agents who were seen taking immigrants into custody in San Francisco this week.Tomoki Chien (The San Francisco Standard)
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> The coalition named the ship “Madeleine” in honour of Palestinian fisherwoman Madeleine Kullab, the youngest professional fisherwoman in the world and the only one in Palestine.
> The ship also carries a number of international activists and a cargo of symbolic humanitarian aid intended to be delivered to Gaza. Most importantly, it carries a message of solidarity with Gaza, a message of defiance and determination to continue popular efforts to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, and an affirmation of the Palestinians’ fundamental right to communicate with the world by sea and their right to establish a humanitarian corridor to bring in aid and relief supplies during the war of extermination waged by the Israeli occupation state against Gaza.
> The departure of this ship comes less than a month after an Israeli drone attacked the “Dameer” ship in international waters off the coast of Malta, which was en route to Gaza...
znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-m…
#MadeleineShip #GazaBlockade #GazaGenocide #MadeleineKullab #ZNetwork
The Madeleine Ship: A Message Of Solidarity With Gaza And Resolve To Break the Blockade
Sunday, June 1st, a small ship from the International Freedom Flotilla Coalition will set sail from the port of Catania in Sicily (Italy). TheZaher Birawi (ZNetwork)
Door Front Egg Delivery..
I think I made her nervous walking in and out the front door getting ready to work the wood pile. It seems rare for the bird to stand up over their egg just looking around like this. It was nice that she didn't give up on laying here where it is most convenient...
#DoorFrontEgg
#SilkyChickens #SilkyHen #烏骨鶏 #BackyardChickens #烏骨鶏雌鳥
Brian Small reshared this.
#WoodSplitting #GinkgoTree #GinkgoWood #薪割り #銀杏木 #銀杏
Brian Small reshared this.
> Silence over one atrocity serves to legitimize all those that came before and those that follow. After Israel got away with bombing its first hospital in Gaza, it knew it could get away unscathed with bombing all hospitals and clinics in Gaza. And it did.
...
> The rules of war are set by the winner. What will the new rules look like after Gaza, where what was once forbidden became standard operating procedure?
> what needs to be explained is the inexplicable. What needs to be explicated is the silence in the face of horror.
> Israel has been brazenly upfront about its plans to subdue Gaza, depopulate it of Palestinians, and seize the Strip for itself.
counterpunch.org/2025/05/30/wh…
#JeffreyStClair #GazaGenocide #RuleOfWar #WesterValues #UnWorthyVictims ...
When the Dead Speak and the Living Refuse to Listen - CounterPunch.org
In this time of silence, many of the words that are spoken have lost all meaning. In fact, their meaning has been inverted, twisted inside out.Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch.org)
The famine in Gaza is completely engineered. This is famine as a weapon, designed quite literally to “starve out” the entire population of Gaza.Palestinian mothers are so malnourished that they can’t breastfeed their newborns. This is appalling enough, but Israel has also blocked the entry of infant formula into Gaza. But there is no shortage of food. Food is within sight of Gaza, inside trucks backed up for miles at the entry points Israel has blocked. If one can’t draw the line at the intentional starvation of newborns, where will one draw the line?
Phoniness Agitation
> ... fascist agitation has by now come to be a profession, as it were, a livelihood. It had plenty of time to test the effectiveness of its various appeals, and through what might be called natural selection, only the most catchy ones have survived. Their effectiveness is itself a function of the psychology of the consumers....
> .. the surviving appeals have been standardized, similarly to the advertising slogans, which proved to be most valuable in the promotion of business. This standardization, in turn, falls in line with stereotypical thinking, that is to say, with the “stereopathy” of those susceptible to this propaganda and their infantile wish for endless, unaltered repetition.
> ... their very “phoniness” may have been relished cynically and sadistically as an index for the fact that power alone decided one’s fate in the Third Reich, that is, power unhampered by rational objectivity.
- counterpunch.org/2025/04/11/wh…
#TheodorAdorno via #JefferyStClair #FascistAgitation #PhoninessApeal
Roaming Charges: Who Shot the Tariffs? - CounterPunch.org
The contradictions of life in late-capitalist America under Trump: Most Americans want the return of manufacturing jobs to the US, as long as they don't have to work them.Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch.org)
Seems Arundhati Roy's work done by a young rapper...
> Mahi Ghane, a Marathi-Hindi rapper, who made her debut with the song ‘Jungle cha Raja’ in 2021, has caught everyone’s attention for writing hard-hitting songs addressing social issues. Through her music she has so far told stories about the Adivasi lifestyle, Babasaheb Ambedkar, and the damaging effects of development.
> Mahi’s recently released song, ‘Haq se Hijda Hun’ delves into the journey of the hijras or the transgender community
thesatyashodhak.com/poetry-led…
#MahiGhane #MahiG
Poetry led me here: Rapper Mahi Ghane
"I usually observe my surroundings and when something strikes me enough to pick my pen I just write it down," says Mahi Ghane in an interview with Sana Irshad.Sana Irshad (The Satyashodhak)
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‘It was just showing that those names are not just statistics, they are real people, real children who had lives who died and it’s to some extent to humanise them. There’s a world war phrase that one death is a tragedy and 10 thousand is a statistic,’ Steve Coogan...
metro.co.uk/2025/05/30/steve-c…
#SteveCoogan #Gaza #GazaGenocide
/HT #JeffreyStClair FB account
Steve Coogan reads the names of over 15,000 children killed in Gaza at powerful vigil
Steve Coogan was one of the many celebrities to attended a vigil in Westminster and pay tribute to the children killed in Gaza.Laura Harman (Metro)
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> "The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations
nytimes.com/2025/05/23/arts/te…
#ArtSpiegelman ##uspol #USACensorship
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The LLM push seems like the same pattern as the push for coal and steam instead of watermills..
AI systems reproduce bias, cheapen and homogenize our social interactions, deskill us, make our jobs more precarious, eliminate opportunities to practice care, and enable authoritarian modes of surveillance and control. Deployed in the public sector, they undercut workers' ability to meaningfully grapple with problems and make ethical decisions that move our society forward. These technologies dehumanize all of us. Collectively, we can choose to reject them.
- thedabbler.patatas.ca/pages/ai…
#SalamiAI #AISystems #TechProgress #WaterMills #FossilCapital
Andreas Malm’s more recent exploration of the origins of “fossil capital,” i.e., why British textile manufacturers in the mid-eighteenth century transitioned from riverside watermills to coal-fired steam engines. As Malm has examined in detail, watermills remained far more efficient and reliable for several decades into the coal era, and there was never a shortage of potential sites for new water-powered textile mills. However, rural workers who lived along England’s riverbanks were far more independent-minded, and more likely to abandon the mills when working conditions became too onerous, than often-desperate urban workers. The latter proved far more willing to work long hours under harsh conditions in steam-powered mills, which could be located anywhere.
- znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-d…
/HT @ASRG via @alex@social.alexschroeder.ch
The Dialectic of Tech and Society - ZNetwork
The development of GMOs and gene-edited crops reaffirms the many ways in which new technologies both reflect and help reinforce the commercial imperatives, and the larger social matrix, from which they emergedBrian Tokar (ZNetwork)
🐉今年も開催決定🐉
都城ふるさと夜市2025
7.19🔥前夜祭〜今昔寄席〜
7.20🔥本祭〜ゲゲゲの祭典〜毎度ローカルパワー炸裂なお祭りですが
今年はどローカル＋豪華客人をたくさんお招きした２日開催のスペシャルとなっております🔥お楽しみに🔥毎度お馴染み⚡️入場無料⚡️ハートフルカツアゲ投げ銭⚡️
来たらわかるさ
わわわのわ
夏の始まりに是非是非
🐉音の柱がおっ立ちます🐉
詳細は五月発表‼︎
果報は寝て待てよよよいよい
#都城ふるさと夜市
#南部式
#芋蔓一座
#ゴッタン
#アンダーブリッジ
- instagram.com/p/DIQKJNyyXpw/
- instagram.com/p/DJn1C55B3VG/
てらばる じんた on Instagram: "🐉今年も開催決定🐉 都城ふるさと夜市2025 7.19🔥前夜祭〜今昔寄席〜 7.20🔥本祭〜ゲゲゲの祭典〜 毎度ローカルパワー炸裂なお祭りですが 今年はどローカル＋
186 likes, 0 comments - jinta_terabaru_nanbushiki on April 9, 2025: "🐉今年も開催決定🐉 都城ふるさと夜市2025 7.19🔥前夜祭〜今昔寄席〜 7.Instagram
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>
"My own hopes and intuitions are that self-fulfilling and creative work is a fundamental human need, and that the pleasures of a challenge met, work well done, the exercise of skill and craftsmanship, are real and significant, and are an essential part of a full and meaningful life. The same is true of the opportunity to understand and enjoy the achievements of others, which often go beyond what we ourselves can do, and to work constructively in cooperation with others.... The task for a modern industrial society is to achieve what is now technically realizable, namely a society which is really based on free voluntary participation of people who produce and create, live their lives freely within institutions they control, and with limited hierarchical structures, possibly none at all."
- znetwork.org/wp-content/upload…
@bsmall2 #LookingForwardBook #MichaelAlbert #NoamChomsky #ChomskyOnWork #ParEcon #ParticipatoryEconomics
> "both of the major world propaganda systems have described this destruction of socialist elements as a victory of socialism. For western capitalism, the purpose is to defame socialism by associating it with Moscow's tyranny; for the Bolsheviks, the purpose was to gain legitimacy by appealing to the goals of authentic socialism."
znetwork.org/wp-content/upload…
#ChomskyOnSocialism #NoamChomsky #LookingForwardBook #MichaelAlbert
@bsmall2@nerdica.net
[h2]1932 Essay{/h2]
The world at the present day is suffering from two misfortunes : there are people who desire goods which they cannot purchase, and there are people who have goods which they cannot sell. Those who have goods which they cannot sell are adopting various ingenious means of disposing of their surplus.
Brazil, which suffers from a surplus of coffee, has taken to using it as fuel on the railways and to burning it on large funeral pyres in lonely valleys. There is a glut of rubber, which is unfortunately made worse by the fact that the natives cannot be restrained from tapping the rubber trees. Fortunately rubber trees are subject to a pest, which has hitherto been combated but which is now about to be encouraged. The world's cotton crop has, in the past, been threatened by the boll weevil, but now the boll weevil is welcomed as a friend, since it helps to prevent overproduction of cotton.
Nobody has thought for a moment that it might be a good thing if somebody could enjoy the produce of human labour. Our morality is ascetic, which makes us regard work as a virtue; it follows that production is good and consumption is bad. This ascetic twist has produced a world system in which half the world is poor because it produces too much and the other half because it consumes too little.
What is the cure for this queer insanity?...
... It seems clear that to improve trade, we must find some way of bringing goods to those who want them. So far, however, the collective wisdom of mankind has not been equal to this effort. People not yet in asylums suggest that the cure for unemployment due to overproduction is to be sought in longer hours. I think it is clear that to start the economic machine again working normally it will be necessary no longer to demand that each operation should at each moment be profitable. There is food rotting in the West of the United States and Canada; there are unemployed populations starving in all the industrial regions throughout the world. If the food were brought to the starving populations, and they were set to work such as would satisfy the wants of Western farmers, the world would be the richer even if no individual capitalist made a profit.The motive of individual profit has apparently broken down, and only organised public effort will restore the economic life of the world.
#BertrandRussel #RusselOnEconomy #RusselOnEconomicSystem #FruitsSystem #SystemFuits #GoingMad?
1939 Novel
>
The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was released in 1940. ^1
Quotes
Behind the fruitfulness are men of understanding and knowledge, and skill, men who experiment with seed, endlessly developing the techniques for greater crops of plants whose roots will resist the million enemies of the earth: the molds, the insects, the rusts, the blights. These men work carefully and endlessly to perfect the seed, theroots. And there are the men of chemistry who spray the trees against pests, who sulphur the grapes, who cut out disease and rots, mildews and sicknesses. Doctors of preventive medicine, men at the borders who look for fruit flies, for Japanese beetle, men who quarantine the sick trees and root them out and burn them, men of knowledge. The men who graft the young trees, the little vines, are the cleverest of all, for theirs is a surgeon's job, as tender and delicate; and these men must have surgeons' hands and surgeons' hearts to slit the bark, to place the grafts, to bind the wounds and cover them from the air. These are great men.
....
The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
- ^1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grap…
#GrapesOfWrath #FruitsSystem #SteinbeckOnEconomy #SteinbeckOnEconomicSystem
One flight attendant said he kept waiting for the sports teams his new bosses had talked about as he flew deportation routes. “You know, the NFL charters, the NBA charters, whatever the hockey one is …” he said.
...
They worried about what would happen in an emergency. Could they really get over a hundred chained passengers off the plane in time?
...
“We have never gotten a clear answer on what we do in an ICE Air evacuation,” another said. “They will not give us an answer.”
They were reminded, over and over, that their job was a vocation, one with a professional code: No matter who the passengers were, flight attendants were in charge of the cabin, responsible for safety in the air.
...
Lala had been scared before her first deportation flight, worried that violence might break out. But fear soon gave way to discomfort at how detainees were treated. “Not being able to serve them, not being able to look at them, I didn’t think that was right,” she said.
...
Another recalled taking a planeload of children and their escorts on a domestic transfer from the southern border to an airport in New York. He tried to slip snacks to the kids. “Even the chaperones were like, ‘Don’t give them any food,’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Where is your humanity?’” (A second flight attendant said that children on a New York flight were fed by their escorts.)
...
The guards often asked flight attendants to heat up the food they brought from home. They asked for drinks, for ice. “They treated us like we were their maids,” said Akilah Sisk, a former flight attendant from Texas.
“In their eyes, the detainees are not the passengers,” another flight attendant said. “The passengers are the guards. And we’re there for the guards.”
...
Nothing bothered flight attendants more than the fact that most of their passengers were in chains. What would happen if a flight had to be evacuated?
...
Neither the ICE Air handbook, nor FAA regulations, nor flight attendant training in Miami explained how to empty a plane full of people whose movements were, by design, so severely hampered. Shackled detainees didn’t even qualify as “able-bodied” enough to sit in exit rows.
To flight attendants, the restraints seemed at odds with the FAA’s “90-second rule,” a decades-old manufacturing standard that says an aircraft must be built for full evacuation in 90 seconds even with half the exits blocked.
... By the end of his first term, Trump was ready to call it quits on the sputtering war in Somalia, ordering almost all U.S. troops out of the country in late 2020.
The withdrawal was reversed by President Joe Biden but the tiny ISIS-Somalia faction remains “a significant threat to peace and security in Somalia,” while the larger militant group, al-Shabab, “continues to carry out complex attacks...
AFRICOM did not respond to requests for clarification about why it took 60 tons of bombs to kill less than 15 militants,
April 2018 drone attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. At the time, AFRICOM announced it had killed “five terrorists” and that “no civilians were killed in this airstrike.”
The Intercept’s investigation revealed that the strike was conducted under loosened rules of engagement sought by the Pentagon and approved by the Trump White House, and that no one was ever held accountable for the civilian deaths. For more than six years, Luul and Mariam’s family has tried to contact the U.S. government, including through an online civilian casualty reporting portal run by AFRICOM, but has not received a response.
theintercept.com/2025/05/23/la…
#NickTurse #Africom #Somalia #TrumpPentagon
In dreams begins responsibity.夢の中で責任が始まる
- eigomeigen.com/quotes/4780.php
#英語名言 #イェイッツ #夢と責任 #WilliamButlerYeats #イェイツの名言
> In dreams begins responsibility
> 「夢で責任が始まる」...
> 「夢で責任が始まる」を訳した畑中佳樹は、この作品についてこう書いている。
> 「たった一発の狙いすました弾丸でたった一つの的を射抜き、あとは一切余計なことをせずに死んでいった作家――デルモア・シュウォーツを、ぼくはそんな風に感じている。その一発の弾丸とは、一つの短編小説である。そのタイトルが、まるで伝説のように、アメリカ小説愛好家の間でひそかに囁かれつづけてきた。ぼくは、それを 「夢で責任が始まる」と訳した。余計な解説はいっさい付けたくない。とにかく読んで下さい。是が非でも人に読ませたくなる小説なのだ。一九三七年、デルモア・シュウォーツ二十四歳の時に発表された短編である。」..
qfwfq.hatenablog.com/entry/200…
#夢と責任 #デルモアーシュウォーツ #畑中佳樹
夢で責任が始まる
たった一篇の作品によって語り継がれる作家がいる。アメリカの作家デルモア・シュウォーツもそうした伝説的な作家のひとりだ。その作品――In dreams begins responsibility 「夢で責任が始まる」は、映画館でスクリーンを見つめている「僕」の語りで始まる。 映っているのは画面にひっきりなしに小雨が降りしきる古いサイレント映画だ。若い男が女の家を訪ねる。男は僕の父、女は母だ。父は母を連れ出す。電車に乗って遊園地へ出かけるために。ふたりは海岸を散策し、メリーゴーラウンドに乗り、日が暮…qfwfqの水に流して Una pietra sopra
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> 「でもね、メタファーとかそんなんじゃなく、僕がこの手でじっさいに父を殺したのかもしれない。そんな気がするんだ。たしかに僕はその日東京には戻らなかった。大島さんが言うようにずっと高松にいた。それはたしかだよ。でも『夢の中で責任が始まる』、そうだね？」
> 「イェーツの詩だ」と大島さんは言う。
> 僕は言う、「僕は夢をとおして父を殺したかもしれない。とくべつな夢の回路みたいなのをとおって、父を殺しにいったのかもしれない」
> #村上春樹 の『 #海辺のカフカ 』の一節である。
qfwfq.hatenablog.com/entry/200…
#夢で責任が始まる #夢の中で責任が始まる #イェイツ
夢で責任が始まる
たった一篇の作品によって語り継がれる作家がいる。アメリカの作家デルモア・シュウォーツもそうした伝説的な作家のひとりだ。その作品――In dreams begins responsibility 「夢で責任が始まる」は、映画館でスクリーンを見つめている「僕」の語りで始まる。 映っているのは画面にひっきりなしに小雨が降りしきる古いサイレント映画だ。若い男が女の家を訪ねる。男は僕の父、女は母だ。父は母を連れ出す。電車に乗って遊園地へ出かけるために。ふたりは海岸を散策し、メリーゴーラウンドに乗り、日が暮…qfwfqの水に流して Una pietra sopra
> .. #FlorenceNightingale.. sent for an ax and commanded the storehouse doors to be broken open.
The Pacific Rural Press and California Farmer1887/11/12
- ^1 note.com/kuga_spqr/n/n12496411…
#LadyOfTheAx
【調査3/3】ナイチンゲールが「斧を持って英軍倉庫から薬を奪う」アメリカの新聞報道の変遷と、「ハンマーを持った淑女」の由来探し
はじめに 以下は回答だけではなく、プロセスも載せているため、長いです。 フロレンス・ナイチンゲールについて、ネットでは「ナイチンゲールが斧を持って倉庫を襲撃し、薬を奪った」というエピソードに加え、最近刊行された『超人ナイチンゲール』でもこの話題について「ハンマーを持って襲撃した」という記述があります。 ナイチンゲールの「薬を貰うために薬箱を斧で叩き割った」という逸話(※史実)に驚愕する人々 あらやだ素敵… togetter.久我真樹 (note（ノート）)
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無用の用 The usefulness of the useless..
It's been a few years since I ask classes of 40 to 80 students for the meaning of "Don Quijote". They tell me it's a store. My question was intstigated by the extra (Not on the test!! just for your enjoyment if you finish quick) reading on the back side of a worksheet. While discussing proverbs in comparison with science, literature, and slang Bertrand Russel mentions Sancho Panza.^1
Sancho Panza produced more proverbs than any other character in fiction
サンチョ・パンザは、他の小説の主人公の誰よりも多くの諺を創りだした。
Bertrand Russel also refers to Don Quijote to illustrate a type of thinking.^2
The classic example of subjectivity is Don Quixote. The first time he made a helmet, he tested its capacity for resisting blows, and battered it out of shape ; next time he did not test it, but “deemed” it to be a very good helmet.
Don Quijote illustrates "subjectivity" in On Education in 1925, and decades later Albert Camus's Myth of Sisyphus uses Quijote thinking to illustrate the difference between "lyricism" and "truism":
... there are probably but two methods of thought: the method of La Palisse and the method of Don Quixote. Solely the balance between evidence and lyricism can allow us to achieve simultaneously emotion and lucidity.... If Faust and Don Quixote are eminent creations of art, this is because of the immeasurable nobilities they point out to us with their earthly hands. Yet a moment always comes when the mind negates the truths that those hands can touch....
- ^1 russell-j.com/PROVERB.HTM
- ^2 russell-j.com/wp/archives/2640
- russell-j.com/beginner/OE16-07…
- ^3 pixelfed.social/bobfisherphoto
- pixelfed.social/p/bobfisherpho…
- pixelfed.social/i/web/post/828…
#BertrandRussel #AlbertCamus #MethodsOfThought #TypesOfThinking
#RusselWithQuijote #CamusWithQuijote
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"I read a really great phrase recently that said something along the lines of 'why would I bother to read something someone couldn't be bothered to write' and that is such a powerful statement and one that aligns absolutely with my views."
..
"If you want to know why a decision is made, we will need humans. If we don't care about that, then we will probably use AI," he says.
...
"Even when you do a Google search it includes an AI overview, while some emails have a topline summary, So now it almost feels like we have no control. How do I turn all that off? It's snowballing."
bbc.com/news/articles/c15q5qzd…
#SabineZetteler
#AISalami #SalamiAI
ghostdancer reshared this.
Would you support a proposal that we all take out sledgehammers every May 12th in memory of Florence Nightingale: Lady of the Hammer (and Data Visualization used to shift toward reasonable policies)...
> And the ‘Lady with the Lamp’? In reality, Nightingale was known to the troops as ‘The Lady with the Hammer’ after she broke into a locked storeroom to release much-needed medical supplies, in defiance of a military commander who had blocked her every move. They revered her for it, of course. But as Russell knew, a powerful, belligerent, rebel woman was far too coarse and unladylike for the readers of The Times, so in the finest traditions of journalism, he simply made it up.
virago.co.uk/virago-news/2020/…
#LadyOfTheHammer #LadyOfTheLamp #FlorenceNightingale
#NursingSchool #FlorenceNightingale #LadyOfTheHammer #ハンマーの貴婦人
Rebel Women, Florence Nightingale
In one of the poems of his later life, Thomas Hardy mused upon the devastation caused by the First World War, and called it ‘A Time of the Breaking of Nations’. Like the revolutions of the 1800s, t…Hachette UK
Brian Small reshared this.
note.com/kuga_spqr/n/n12496411…
【調査3/3】ナイチンゲールが「斧を持って英軍倉庫から薬を奪う」アメリカの新聞報道の変遷と、「ハンマーを持った淑女」の由来探し
はじめに 以下は回答だけではなく、プロセスも載せているため、長いです。 フロレンス・ナイチンゲールについて、ネットでは「ナイチンゲールが斧を持って倉庫を襲撃し、薬を奪った」というエピソードに加え、最近刊行された『超人ナイチンゲール』でもこの話題について「ハンマーを持って襲撃した」という記述があります。 ナイチンゲールの「薬を貰うために薬箱を斧で叩き割った」という逸話(※史実)に驚愕する人々 あらやだ素敵… togetter.久我真樹 (note（ノート）)
そこで、同書を入手して読んでみると、「備品庫におしいってシーツや包帯などを取り出す看護婦」と題したイラストと、それを補足するテキストが記されていました。以下、引用します。兵士たちの苦しみについて新聞何度を読んで知ったイギリス国民は、シーツや包帯や食べ物を船に何隻分も寄贈しました。問題は、無能な医務官たちがそれをきちんとくばらないことでした。兵士たちはフローレンス・ナイチンゲールのことを「かなづちをもった婦人」と呼びました。フローレンスは兵士の苦痛をすこしでもやわらげようと、ほんとうに備品庫におしいって包帯などを取り出しました。
『ナイチンゲール: 現在の看護のあり方を確立した、イギリスの不屈の運動家』p.89
> All Crimean War hospitals were ghastly, she insists, and the statistics suggest that at least two had higher death rates than Scutari. McDonald also makes a persuasive case that Nightingale believed the blame for Scutari’s dreadful state lay elsewhere. In her letters, she pointed repeatedly at military doctors and administrators, chastising them for a host of “murderous” errors including sending cholera cases to overcrowded wards and delaying having the hospital “drained and ventilated.” The sanitary commission’s investigation confirmed Nightingale’s suspicions about the links between filth and disease, McDonald contends, and she became determined never to let those conditions occur again. “That is the foundation of all she does in public health for the rest of her life,” McDonald says...
> Throughout her sojourn, she faced the resentment of officers and bureaucrats who regarded her as an interloper. “There is not an official who would not burn me like Joan of Arc if he could,” Nightingale wrote from Crimea, “but they know that the War Office cannot turn me out because the country is with me.”
- smithsonianmag.com/history/the…
#FlorenceNightingale #LadyOfTheLamp #LadyOfTheHammer #Scutari
@bsmall2
The Defiance of Florence Nightingale
Scholars are finding there’s much more to the “lady with the lamp” than her famous exploits as a nurse in the Crimean WarSmithsonian Magazine
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#SewageSystem #hospitalhygiene #FlorenceNightingale #LadyOfTheHammer #NightingaleStatistician
@bsmall2@nerdica.net
#StatisticsGodliness
@bsmall2@fedibird.com @bsmall2@nerdica.net
Brian Small reshared this.
Brian Small
in reply to Brian Small • •- tiksi.net/display/db9d525e-8d2…
- archive.foodfirst.org/publicat…
#HungerMyths #FoodFirst