#The Operating System

[fairydusks]

Btw from now til the end of November AK Press is giving away ebooks for free 🤍

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

"Like a state, an operating system “governs” the programs and applications under it and networked with it as well as, to some extent, the individuals who avail themselves of these tools and resources. It defines us in relation to itself, and each other, as “users,” and can reward us, reject our requests, or even bar us from access according to its needs. It can also monitor and surveil us. Referring to giant metaplatforms like Android and Apple, the German sociologist Philipp Staab observes, “Their own systems are continuously optimized for maximum convenience, to reduce the need to switch to another system. On the other hand, they make it as difficult as possible for users to use certain services outside their own ecosystem.” This is our starting point for understanding the State. Its central feature is the legal, administrative, and decision-making structure we refer to as government. But the State is a much larger, more complex phenomenon, a comprehensive means of organizing and exercising power that, once it’s launched, expands to cover more and more aspects of existence according to a direction and logic of its own. “The state could never be the means for any special or definite end, as liberalism conceived it to be,” the German anarchist Rudolf Rocker wrote in his classic, Nationalism and Culture ; “it was rather, in its highest form, an end in itself, an end sufficient for itself.” At the same time, and again like a computer operating system, the State is not a material object or entity. The various pieces of “hardware” we associate with it—big, imposing neoclassical buildings fronted by Greco-Roman columns quite often come to mind, along with military bases, roads, and monuments—are merely material containers and symbols of the immaterial reality. An operating system is soft ware, a collection of embedded commands that direct a machine called a computer. The State, too, is “software”: a collection of ideas, doctrines, commands, and processes that direct the deployment of human beings and their deployment of physical resources. The State is at once a political, social-cultural, and economic entity. Like an operating system, it networks together institutions, organizations, and less formal groups including government but also many others: corporations, banks, other financial institutions (state-chartered, as it happens), and other underpinnings of capitalism; eleemosynary (nonprofit and charitable) institutions; so-called civil society groups and political parties (especially “established” parties like the Democrats and Republicans in the United States, which have evolved into quasi-state institutions); and even basic units like families and households. Other institutions and groupings that form part of the State furnish cultural and even paramilitary support to the social order, strengthen organized religion, and reinforce racial and gender stratification: for instance, the extreme wings of the nativist Alternative for Germany; the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in India; and the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, the National Rifle Association, militia groups, the Proud Boys, and the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States." -The operating system: An anarchist theory of the modern state

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.

[sevastiel]

Sol’s wounds, Lua’s tears

Thinking about umbra drifting in the void post mid-new war-happenings with nothing but the corpse of another lost child.

[jan-silan]

absolutely wild to me that there are transphobic linux users out there. like what do you mean you literally use the trans people operating system

[disgracefulthings]

Modern Day Platonic Cumplane AU where Shen Yuan meets struggling author, Shang Qinghua. He realizes that Shang Qinghua is the author of his most hated story, and rips into him. After he is done, Shang Qinghua explains how he currently can't afford to write a good story, and Shen Yuan, a rich kid who has done nothing with his life at this point, decides to help fund his story in exchange for being his editor, and Shang Qinghua agrees

After seeing the state of Shang Qinghua's apartment and all of his possessions, Shen Yuan decides 'hell naw', and has Shang Qinghua move in with him (he had an extra room) and replaces all his stuff. They end up becoming close friends, and Shen Yuan learns that being an editor is fulfilling for him

While those two get along, their friends think something else is happening. They believe that Shen Yuan has become a Sugar Daddy, and Shang Qinghua is his Sugar Baby, and they are NOT happy about that

It does not help when they go to Shen Yuan and tell him that Shang Qinghua wants his money, Shen Yuan replies 'I know, that was part of our arrangement'

Hearts are broken and many people want to break them up for their own selfish reasons (whether because they want to be with Shen Yuan or Shang Qinghua, or in Shen Jiu's case, doesn't want his baby brother to date a freeloader)

Meanwhile Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan are oblivious and are having the time of their lives working on their masterpiece

[iwatcheditbegin]

I know i’ve said it before. But this discourse about the ethics regarding taylor swift being a billionaire are so disingenuous. She doesn’t have a makeup line, clothing line, brand endorsements.

The bulk of her income is entirely from her own talent as a musician. She has not exploited anyone. She’s also not even close to being a cash billionaire when you look at the numbers it’s like half of that ( bc it’s hard to become a billionaire without shady shit) . Taylor is known to pay her employees well. By percentage what she gives away to charity and compensates her team with is unheard of. She gave 10% of her net worth away in bonuses to everyone who worked on her tour. That’s just what we know of.

I’m not even saying this as a fan, but you cannot look at someone like her and how she moves and compare that to other billionaires and oligarchs.

I’m all for wealthy people paying their fair share. I hate capitalism and the current system but I do think she’s a good example of doing the best to be ethical within the current system

[lorenzonuti]

Floating Stasis.

Now available for purchase on INPRNT

[soup-mother]

i do wish people would offer more coherent reasons for people to switch to Linux other than "Hurr durr AI scary bad" or some vague security thing that isn't relevant to 90% of people who use a computer.

"Windows is literally malware" it is a kind of to moderately invasive operating system that you don't like. incidentally it's also what the vast majority of people use!

have you maybe considered more grounded approaches like "if your pc is below windows 11 specs try Linux instead of throwing it out!" or "linux is fun!" or "lots of things run on linux so getting familiar with it can be useful" or "it can really speed up an old computer"

anyway shout-out to every time a Tumblr panic campaign "windows is EVIL and is going to steal ALL your data you need to delete it RIGHT NOW because AI and MALWARE" post goes around and then nothing happens except windows gets a little more invasive in a way that people don't really care about or notice

[tanyafreemont]

i was watching the new quinton reviews video and this computer immediately stuck out to me because ??? so i stuck it into MS paint and i've discovered that the computers of mid-late icarly are on a whole other level & i want whatever this OS has going on. it is a gender to me

[liminalmindcore]

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

"In the depths of the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration rescued capitalism by creating social provisions that assisted white, urban, industrial working-class households headed by male breadwinners, because it feared they could be radicalized by the socialist and communist Left, destabilizing the State and the capitalist economic order. Ten years of progress in American civil rights, beginning with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education , stemmed from Washington’s desire to present itself as a champion of freedom and democracy in the face of what it viewed as a global rivalry with the Soviet Union. The Great Society programs of the 1960s were propelled by the Johnson administration’s “guns and butter” strategy to shore up support for its war in Vietnam and its desire to contain the urban uprisings of the period. Today, no other superpower provides a countervailing force; labor unions and erstwhile social-democratic parties like the Labour Party in the UK, Germany’s Social Democrats, France’s Socialists, and—marginally—the Democratic Party in the United States have been co-opted and driven into a defensive posture; and an ever more precarious economy has forced individuals to focus ever more intently on keeping themselves afloat materially. The pattern has become predictable: parties of the Left are raised into power by the support of the working class and the precarious middle class; as their operatives become more professional and technocratic and the parties themselves acquire more hierarchical power structures, they move to the right. Eventually, we find them implementing milder versions of the same policies pursued by the Right, from promoting the corporate global trade agenda to “reforming” social services, generally in the name of achieving political consensus. Thus, the Left lends its hand to the reproduction of the State, which is then free to bail out the financial sector, deregulate the extractive industries, and encourage property speculation at the expense of the urban poor and middle class. To insulate the propertied class’s investments, the State facilitates, or at least turns a blind eye to, the sheltering of assets in offshore tax havens and condones a fast-growing, ancillary market in citizenships and residencies for the rich." -The operating system: An anarchist theory of the modern state

[thebiscuitlabryinth]

I can imagine after a while Black Rasin Cookie and maybe some other villagers just make plans to drive Plain Yogurt Cookie away from the village, or at least Healer Cookie, because of how much they do not like his vibes and Healer is not really listening.

Plan after plan, with various degrees of success, I can also see Plain Yogurt getting so fed up that he almost breaks character in front of Healer. Luckily, he was able to pull himself up by his boots' strips and stay in character enough. Later, however, he will get them back, and he will get them back good.

When Black Raisin asked him to accompany her on patrol, Shadow Milk already knew something annoying was going to happen.

There have been a few plots over the past few weeks between Black Raisin and a few of the more stubborn villagers, plots that involve trying to push Shadow Milk out of the village. It was funny at first, mostly because they were such pathetic attempts, but they just kept coming. Black Raisin is clearly determined, even though her accomplices have slowly backed down, accepting Shadow Milk's presence.

It was obvious this was going to be another attempt. Black Raisin never wants him on patrol, which is usually convenient, because Shadow Milk doesn't particularly want to patrol either. Still, Shadow Milk played along, just to see what she would come up with.

Somehow, he hadn't fully considered the possibility of this.

It was quick. One moment they were walking along the edge of the Raisin Cliffs, the silence between them thick and terse, and the next Shadow Milk was being pushed off the side to plummet down to his death.

The fall is more than long enough for Shadow Milk to fortify his body with magic, but it still irritates him when he hits the ground, the wind knocked out of him as a few tiny cracks spider along his dough. He lays still as he watches the tiny dark splotch that is Black Raisin lean over the edge to peer down at him, before disappearing again, seemingly satisfied that he was taken care of.

Shadow Milk would be impressed with her audacity, with her gumption and gall, if he wasn't absolutely furious that she had somehow managed to pull such a sloppy trick off. He had mistakenly assumed that she would at least avoid killing him, since she seemed to care so much about Pure Vanilla's opinion, but it seemed her devotion to him didn't extend to accepting his silly ideals. Ugh.

Shadow Milk warps himself back to the village and stumbles over to the healer's tent. With every step, his cracks grow to frankly ridiculous sizes, a physical illusion that does little to actually affect him.

"I'm hurt!" He wails as he bursts into the healer's tent, ignoring the fact that Pure Vanilla seems to be in the middle of helping another Cookie as he collapses to the floor. "Ah, everything hurts!"

"Plain Yogurt?" Pure Vanilla calls, alarmed, and excuses himself from his other patient to scramble over to his side. Shadow Milk's anger eases into a sickly satisfaction as he watches Pure Vanilla fuss over him, his dough growing pale as he gently traces those exaggerated cracks. "Oh, what happened?"

"I don't know, I didn't see much. Ask Black Raisin when she gets back." Shadow Milk sniffs.

Black Raisin's face when she enters the healer's tent and sees Pure Vanilla tending to Shadow Milk is nothing short of priceless. She looks utterly crushed, a stormy despair swirling in her eyes as she stutters, "You- how did you-?"

"Ah, Black Raisin!" Pure Vanilla turns to her eagerly, his hand still resting warmly against Shadow Milk's chest. "Do you know what happened to Plain Yogurt? He says he doesn't know for certain what happened, but the damage is awful. It's almost as bad as when he first arrived!"

Black Raisin stiffens at the question, and Shadow Milk flashes her a dark, smug grin. So? What will you do now? Go on, lie.

"I don't know either. I lost track of him somewhere by the cliffs." She answers slowly, averting her gaze. Her crow hunkers down on her shoulder, as if it feels guilty too. "...Maybe he's just clumsy."

Clumsy. Clumsy. Him?

Shadow Milk barks out a laugh, far too sharp to be anything less than maniacal, and just barely manages to cut himself off devolving into cackles. He grits his fangs together, balling his hands into fists to hide the claws that have torn through his fingers. He imagines, briefly but vividly, tearing Black Raisin apart piece by piece and feeding her crumbs to the crows she loves so much.

Pure Vanilla turns back to him, worried. "Plain Yogurt? Are you alright?"

No, he wants to lunge at Black Raisin, who is watching him with unnerved eyes, and rip her throat out with his teeth. But he can't say that, he can't do that. Yet.

"Hurts." He croaks out in a growl, forcefully craning his head towards Pure Vanilla and letting the hot gold of his magic try and fail to wash him clean of his frustration.

[charlie-vr]

get kissed idiot

[computer-nerd-girl]