“in The 21st Century Borders Aren’t Decided By Force” And Yet They Are Maintained By It

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists.

I am delighted to have this special chance now to share the lessons again. I was honored when John, a wise advocate for civil discourse and civic engagement, volunteered to read them aloud.

For the full video, see my substack.

Hollywood is the single best example of mature labor power in America

This afternoon (May 6), I’ll be in Berkeley at the Bay Area Bookfest for a 3:30PM event with Glynn Washington for my book Red Team Blues; tomorrow (May 7), it’s an 11AM event with Wendy Liu for my book Chokepoint Capitalism.

Weds (May 10), I’m in Vancouver for a keynote at the Open Source Summit and a book event at Heritage Hall and Thu (May 11), I’m in Calgary for Wordfest.

The Writers Guild is on strike. Hollywood is closed for business. The union’s bargaining documents reveal a cartel of studios that refused to negotiate on a single position. This could go on for a long-ass time:

https://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/members/member_info/contract-2023/WGA_proposals.pdf

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

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re: tumblr

hello! I work in tech and here are some important things to know about "tumblr is going into maintenance mode." please note I do not work at tumblr, I've just worked at tumblr-adjacent sort of companies for my entire adult life and i've gone through this before.

what does maintenance mode mean?

literally what it sounds like -- Automattic is not going to be hiring new staff, investing in new product features, or doing anything new on tumblr. the staff that remains working on tumblr will be maintaining the status quo. most of the staff will be allocated elsewhere (or possibly laid off, though it looks like from that memo that's not what they're planning to do). it does not mean tumblr is shutting down. you should still buy premium, get merch, etc, because this is definitely step one of the shutdown process, but a maintenance mode designation is basically to see if tumblr will generate a revenue without putting more money into it than strictly necessary.

why did this happen?

obviously I do not know directly. from my observation, it's in part because Yahoo had absolutely no idea what to do with this platform, and then when Automattic bought it they also... struggled... but it is also in part because the user base has been so viciously anti-monetization that most attempts were killed outright.

yes, the user base is part of the problem. the absolute feral anti-premium, anti-ads, anti-tipping, anti-everything tumblr tried to do to make money is part of the problem. it's not the only part of the problem by a long shot, but I would be remiss not to mention it.

what do I do now?

use the platform. just like, keep using tumblr. do not abandon ship. buy premium, get yourself some badges, get yourself some merch, but use the platform. ad revenue is based on impressions and clicks. if a ton of the user base gives up, that revenue disappears.

--

tumblr is extremely special. I've never seen anything like it in my 20-odd years of being Very Online, and I was a minor BNF in WolfStar during LiveJournal days. I don't know that it can be recreated elsewhere. I don't know where fandom will go. I know that something else will exist after tumblr and that nothing gold can stay, but i don't think the specific kind of joy found here can be recreated. i say this not to be a downer, but to be realistic. I guess I should find a Bluesky invite.

I've been here since 2008. I'm not going anywhere as long as this site exists. hope you'll stay here with me.

J. C. Leyendecker

This line about how even the other gay people you find annoying or sell outs or who live their life in the exact opposite way you do are still part of the tribe was written in 1977 but should be plastered on the internet today

October 6, 1998 an ordinary boy was beaten and left for dead, tied to a fence in a pasture in Wyoming. The people who came upon the body believed it was not human but a scarecrow but for the only part of his face not covered in blood were two white lines running down his cheeks where the tears had dried. His death was horrific yet not in vain. This ordinary boy set in motion a fight for equality, a fight for dignity. You don't have to be gay to understand this, you need only be human. Say his name…. Matthew Shepard

every now and again i think "surely it can't be that weird for a child to sort things, it has to be something every child does"

and then i remember that my mother finally had an allistic child after two autistic kids in a row and was baffled and annoyed to find out she couldn't just keep him occupied by sticking a box of unsorted buttons in front of him and let him sort them

like my mother thought, exactly like i do sometimes, that surely every child must just sit there and sort whatever is in front of them but no, actually, most of my non autistic peers didn't do this and thought i was a fucking weirdo for doing it

anyway i still struggle to believe that most people don't find deep enjoyment in sitting there and arbitrarily sorting shit. what do they even do if they need to do data entry? do they just suffer? weirdos.