Tag: politics

Nope, not on Facebook, Insta, or Threads (or any Meta product)

~ CZed ~ 2 Comments

Never gonna be.

1) Whatever good will they might have had from me at one time has been so throughly abused and squandered that it’s not happening.

2) I made that decision a WHILE back, deleted accounts, walked away.

3) Even if I was willing to try, it’s where people I deeply dislike do their social media-ing, and thanks, no.

4) Given this article, (gift link) wapo.st/44x4jrb ? It’s all algorithm driven, so there’s very little user control of the content they see. Since that’s the thing people have been asking for from the beginning from every provider (let me control my account), and since this is how Meta is starting this? They are never going to change.

5) They started as a way to abuse women. They abused people with clicky games. They abused people with psych experiments. They’ve abused the privacy of people who have never even signed up for an account. So much media manipulation. I do not know how to express how repeatedly and reproducibly evil they are, and how incapable of change they are.

6) The only winning game is not to play.

Team #FeedBabies: Breast-feeding & Formula Thread

~ CZed

July 9, 2018: A twitter thread With minor edits to fix typos or phrasing that 280 characters made unclear.
(2022 note: I use moms, women, and breastfeeding in this piece because the majority of existing legislation and proposed legislation is based on biological determinism and does not recognize non-binary and trans parents who have given birth. I see you, I recognize you, you are valuable.)

Trigger Warning: A thread on the commodification and conscription of women’s bodies. You’ve been warned. Exploring relationships between childbearing, work, coercive control, breast feeding, formula, gig economies, capitalist exploitation, colonialism and colonialist paternalism…

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Luxuries Bought With Others’ Lives: NPCs, Dehumanization, and Pandemic Ethics

~ CZed

Opening monologue:

This is Free City.
Look at this guy. He’s one of the sunglasses people.
And the people who wear sunglasses? Are heroes.
They have a devil-may-care attitude and they run this town.
Bombshell:You are so hot.
Revenjamin Buttons, dropping into driver’s seat: Oh, I know.
See? That’s not even his car. Or his wife.
For the sunglasses people, they get to do anything they want.
They go on all sorts of missions, they got cool hair, cool clothes.
I mean, laws aren’t really laws to them.They’re more like mild suggestions.
Like, I don’t think he’s gonna return that car.
Or that nice lady.
See what I mean? Hero.

A still from the movie Free Guy, featuring Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer. Image copyright (©) 20th Century Studios or related entities. Used for publicity and promotional purposes.

Thus begins Free Guy. 105 words of thesis statement.

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Foundations of the #MoneyLaundry – A Twitter Seminar

~ CZed

Originally a Twitter thread. January 4, 2020

I note here: there will be homework, because seriously, you’ve gotta have basics.
Do the reading. I’m not sending you at books, just articles. I’ll screenshot if it comes from a high word count source.

Money laundering is the process of
evading taxation
and/or
legal obligations such as payroll taxes
and/or
Obscuring the documentation of income from illegal actions or sources. It’s a crime of its own, but money laundering is what makes crime pay.

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Cradle To Gate, End of Life Costs

~ CZed

Originally a twitter thread, 26 August, 2021; commentary on cotton shopping bags

Hey, let’s talk about a couple of terms that are going around: “cradle to gate cost” and “end of life cost”. (Also sometimes “cradle to grave cost”). Cradle to gate measures what an item costs to manufacture, ship and get through the point of sale. Tracking stops after sale.

It’s a really useful metric for manufacturers, and for disposable, single use items, because single use items may see a small amount of travel before they’re used and discarded, but it’s a very minor addition to the cost of the item.

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Peelian Principles and American Policing

~ CZed ~ 1 Comment

Originally a Twitter thread, April 24, 2021


A long thread on the primary alternative to the US model of policing, with some history, mostly for context.
Long thread. References used at end. (And yes, there is synthesis here.) 

The US police system is an independent evolution vs the rest of the Anglosphere. And a blighted evolution, since ours developed out of systems specifically intended to support racist institutions. The American system started with slave patrols. It’s fruit from a poisoned tree.

But our system is not the only system.

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The Monstrous Arrogance

~ CZed

Originally written on Twitter, February 21, 2018.

Nothing has changed, except it’s gotten worse.

Reposting it here, now, because there is no room in my heart to say this again.

(Note: read the link if possible. I like the gifs.)

I’ve spent my entire professional career putting people back together after trauma, especially gun trauma. 19 years.

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