MUSKISM—Its Roots, Nature & How to Fight

MUSKISM—Its Roots, Nature & How to Fight

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QUINN SLOBODIAN & BEN TARNOFF on why understanding Elon Musk’s computational worldview is essential for protecting the public sphere and fighting back against cyborg conservatism

 Musk interestingly has this way of excluding the majority of the population from consideration, what he variously calls non-playing characters or NPCs, which is a category from video games, or sometimes bots, vampires. And this is a much more stark version of insider and outsider group creation than even hierarchies of race because it takes this one step further by taking very seriously the idea that other people are not only not human, but they in some way don't even exist, which is the literal reading of Musk's adoption of Nick Bostrom's simulation theory, which is that most people are simply programmable parts of a simulation, and only a small number of people are actual players.

Indigenous Surviving, Thriving & Love

Indigenous Surviving, Thriving & Love

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JULIAN BRAVE NOISECAT · Author of We Survived the Night · Oscar-nominated Filmmaker · Champion Powwow Dancer

Everything from the title to the words and style all the way up to the structure I'm working with, I describe them as forms from my own culture... that come from my own people.

Materializing the Cloud—Breaking Tech’s Spell Over Us

Materializing the Cloud—Breaking Tech’s Spell Over Us

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TAMARA KNEESE · Director of Data & Society Research Institute's Climate, Justice & Technology Program · XIAOWEI WANG · Artist · Writer · Organizer · Coder

I think increasingly more and more of us are aware of these tiny silicon wafers that power everything from our watches to our phones, to these data centers... semiconductors are, I think of it as alchemy in a lot of ways, chemical alchemy, and they require vast amounts of water, resources, electricity, energy, and especially chemicals to turn a silicon wafer into essentially this very tiny, tiny circuit.

The Imperative to Support the People of Venezuela

The Imperative to Support the People of Venezuela

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A Conversation with ANDERSON BEAN, SIMÓN RODRÍGUEZ & EMILIANO TERÁN

An anti-worker, repressive, neoliberal government does not become socialists by adopting anti-US rhetoric or flying a red flag or aligning with Russia or China.

The Effects of the War on the Iranian People

The Effects of the War on the Iranian People

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Iranian Journalists FATEMEH JAMALPOUR & NILO TABRIZY

Imagine losing your internet access just as airstrikes begin in your city, severing you from loved ones and the outside world. Jamalpour and Tabrizy authored a book on Iran's women-led uprising and continue to report on the lives of ordinary Iranians, civilian casualties and infrastructure damage.

The Fight for the Future: AI, Privacy & Power

The Fight for the Future: AI, Privacy & Power

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CARISSA VÉLIZ · Author of Prophecy: Prediction, Power & the Fight for the Future · Privacy is Power: Why & How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data

Algorithms are deciding whether you are eligible for a loan, a job, an apartment or insurance. They determine what you see online, who reads your social media posts and who connects with you on dating apps. They may even decide whether you get arrested or go to jail. Your very life hangs in the balance of prophecies.

If you are unlucky, a prediction will be what kills you. Forecasts can determine your place on a waiting list for an organ transplant or whether you get medical care in an emergency. Policymaking hinges on predictions. War and peace and whether someone lives or dies are decided based on forecasts about the strength of an adversary, the impact of a mission or the identity of a person. And yet no one has asked your permission to make those guesses. No governmental agency is supervising them. No one is informing you of the prophecies that shape your fate. Prophecies are the grounds on which fights over the future take place.

How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration

How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration

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VICTORIA LAW · Journalist · Author of Corridors of Contagion · Resistance Behind Bars

The United States has this mentality that if somebody is serving a prison sentence or if somebody is in jail, they somehow deserve whatever happens. Whether it is medical neglect, whether it is abuse by staff or the other incarcerated people, whether it is terrible food, whether it is not being able to communicate or see their family members and loved ones. What happened in 2020 is that being incarcerated became a possible death sentence. Because we saw that prison deaths jumped 77% compared to the previous year where there was not a pandemic in the United States.

Science in Resistance: Direct Action for Climate Justice, Democracy in Education

Science in Resistance: Direct Action for Climate Justice, Democracy in Education

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FERNANDO RACIMO · Scientist-activist · Author · Professor of Ecology & Evolution · Globe Institute · University of Copenhagen

By pretending like science is neutral or apolitical, we're really feeding a particular discourse which serves whatever political structures are in place right now, whatever status quo is in place right now. Science can never be apolitical because it's a human activity, it's practiced in society with others, with human and more-than-human beings.