#elitism

Miguel Afonso Caetanoremixtures@tldr.nettime.org
2025-05-03

"Say what you want about Trump, but he’s known to speak in simple and plain language. Does this make him dumb? I would counter that it makes him accessible.

Does this mean that Sanders and AOC should stop talking about oligarchy? Among their college-educated base, I see no reason why it’s a particularly bad idea. They understand the language and it resonates with them.

There’s also some polling out there from a progressive polling firm showing that most Americans can identify the definition of oligarchy when presented with a multiple-choice question. This isn’t the best polling design in the world, but it’s possible that Sanders and AOC have had some luck in popularizing the term.

But Democrats and progressives need to stop thinking that everyone in America has a college degree and follows every bit of minutiae in the news. Republicans tend to use simpler language, and it’s no surprise that they’ve won the working class’s votes for several elections in a row now. They speak more like ordinary people than Democrats do.

It’s not dumb to not understand every word in the English dictionary. What would be dumb is politicians insisting that we use words that people don’t understand in order to persuade them."

www.theamericansaga.com/p/do-americans-understand-what-bernie

#USA #Bernie #AOC #Oligarchy #Readability #Trump #DemocraticParty #Elitism #Populism

2025-05-01

youtube.com/shorts/iY5gWHpsLzQ

I think they buried the lead.
Education scarcity is a myth.

#HigherEd #Endowment #Colleges #Elitism

Mix Mistress Alice💄MixMistressAlice@todon.eu
2025-04-23

"Elon Musk’s growing role in politics represents a troubling evolution in how wealthy elites shape public discourse and policy. From his control of X (formerly Twitter) to his involvement in U.S. elections alongside Donald Trump, to his recent support for anti-migrant and nationalist parties in Europe (including the AfD and Tommy Robinson), Musk’s actions highlight the alarming intersection of tech and political power.

How has the influence of billionaires evolved to dominate public discourse so openly? What does this growing consolidation of power mean for democracy? And how we can people push back against it?"—DIEM25

Elon Musk’s Move Into Politics: Yanis Varoufakis @VaroufakisDE & Cory Doctorow @pluralistic on Fighting Billionaire Control hosted by Mehran Khalili. >

youtube.com/live/I0kvjNh7czM?f

#Elon_Musk #USA #policy #cloud_capital #politics #rhetoric #Donald_Trump #nationalism #techbros #technology #AfD #wealthy_elite #elitism #influence #broligarchy #algocracy #power_consolidation

Mix Mistress Alice💄MixMistressAlice@todon.eu
2025-04-18

” It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. […]
Chan documents how the Big Data on which AI are trained are based on long-standing data infrastructures—sets of practices, policies, and logics—that remove, imperil, devalue, and actively harm people who refuse to conform to racialized patriarchal power structures and the priorities of surveillance capitalism—most pointedly immigrant, feminist, and low-income communities.
[…] Chan dedicates half of the book to amplifying and praising the small-scale, community-led projects of the past and present—from the legendary Hull House’s data visualizations to community data initiatives in Champaign, Illinois. There is much fuel for political outrage in this book and also fodder for solidarity and hope.” "—New Books in Critical Theory

Predatory Data - Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future >

newbooksnetwork.com/anita-say-

#podcast #InformationSciences #interview #eugenics #author #surveillance_capitalism #third_reich #US #elitism #contaminants_conspiracy #solidarity #power_structures #alienation #patriarchy #Chinese_women #racism #books #tech #exclusion #tech #panopticon #policies #anti_pluralism #harm #toxic_digital_environment #data_extractivism

N-gated Hacker Newsngate
2025-04-18

🚫🎉 Oh, look, another pretentious trip down memory lane that no one asked for, locked behind a 403 wall. Apparently, is so exclusive now that even won’t let you in without a velvet rope and a monocle. 🙄🖥️
datagubbe.se/aficion/

Mix Mistress Alice💄MixMistressAlice@todon.eu
2025-04-15

"For the hardline conservatives ruling Poland and Hungary, the transition from communism to liberal democracy was a mirage. They fervently believe a more decisive break with the past is needed to achieve national liberation"—The Guardian Long

From the archive: The revolt against liberalism: what’s driving Poland and Hungary’s nativist turn? by Nicholas Mulder, read by Tanya Cubric>

theguardian.com/news/audio/202

#podcast #Hungary #Poland #history #EU #economy #EconomyUnion #bigotry
#EuropeanUnion #EUmembership #StimulusPackages #budget #TreatyRights #liberalism #SocialDemocracy #LiberalDemocracy #democracy #LegalRecognition #CivicPlatforms vs #Orban #Kaczyński #EasternEurope #autocracy #RightWing #illiberalism #populism #intolerance #bigotry #nationalism #NationalistRight #ExtremeRight #AbortionBans #conservatism #racism #FarRight #purges #elitism #ClosedSocieties

SD Liz Roguestyle 🤩sdlizlifestyle
2025-04-09

Had to sLeep NOW cuz of aLL this imposed by , n 🥵

mastodon.social/@donni/1143057

N-gated Hacker Newsngate
2025-04-08

Peter Thiel, the self-proclaimed oracle of , has a new metric for elitism: 🌟Harvard or bust!🌟 Because, obviously, where you went to school matters more than what you actually do. 🙄 Oh Peter, keep those pearls of wisdom coming! 😂
offthefrontpage.com/peter-thie

2025-04-03
2025-03-22

Republicans used the Democratic elite's contempt for the working class to win elections, but now they're doing the same thing #USPolitics #USPol #USPoli #meritocracy #elitism #universities #education youtube.com/watch?v=tv1UCZqTe8

Mix Mistress Alice💄MixMistressAlice@todon.eu
2025-03-15

"Authoritarian forces around the world are reshaping digital technologies into tools of control. Imara Jones dives into the growing threat of digital authoritarianism in the United States with writer & scholar Katherine Alejandra Cross. Katherine unpacks why social media has become such a radicalizing force in the wake of the SARScov2 pandemic and development of individualizing algorithms. She & Imara also dig into the techno-authoritarian beliefs behind the "California ideology,” the way that Web 2.0 undermines collective action, and why Elon Musk’s power grab is a sign of desperation within Silicon Valley elite."—TransLash Podcast

The Threat of Digital Authoritarianism >

shows.acast.com/translash/epis

#podcast #TechnoFeudalism #technocracy #AsocialMedia #RightWingRadicalization #DigitalAuthoritarianism #IndividualizingAlgorithms #pandemic #PowerGrab #AI #LLM #threat #trauma #SiliconValley #elite #desperation #authoritarianism #elitism #fascism #cryptobros #corporatocracy #techbros #manosphere #layoffs vs #solidarity #unions #CollectiveAction #DEI #workforce #LabourPower #inclusion #diversity #streaming #KatherineAlejandraCross #ImaraJones

ManVsXerox: Resistful Dingusmanvsxerox@mindly.social
2025-03-07

I want to post here that there's a group polluting the Democratic party right now called the Third Way, they are the main moderate democratic group trying to "Make us more moderate". Enough is enough. Here's a video to say more. Maybe spam their inboxes, just saying.

tinyurl.com/5fxfv72d

#overtonwindow #dems #usa #DNC #growaspineorresign #liberals #elitism #leftist

2025-03-05

A good analysis of the jump in right-wing tech bro support for Trump and the fault lines that exist between the neoreactionary and MAGA movements.

===

But despite its impact on the current Trump regime, neoreactionary politics is not MAGA politics, as the tagline to James Pogue’s 2022 Vanity Fair article noted. The key reason is that neoreaction is not populist. The movement to Make America Great Again, Trump’s political base, is a classic example of right-wing populism, i.e., a movement that combines calls to intensify oppression with twisted forms of anti-elitism. MAGA politics is about defending privilege and attacking those who are seen as threatening it from below, but it also feeds on people’s sense of disempowerment, of being beaten down by a few people on top, a belief that those in power have betrayed “we the people” and must be stripped of their positions.

Neoreactionaries, by contrast, believe firmly that elites should rule and “the people” (Nick Land’s “howling irrational mob”) should not. Since Trump first entered the 2016 presidential race, MAGA aimed to mobilize a mass movement to overturn the political establishment, liberal and conservative alike. This initiative included not just electoral campaigns but also broad-based organizing and physical protests that culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol in hopes of overturning the 2020 election results by force. But neoreactionaries dismiss the whole idea of a popular uprising. As Yarvin wrote in June 2024, “Charlottesville [the 2017 Unite the Right rally] and January 6 were the last lame breaths of what John Adams called ‘mobocracy’ in America.” What Yarvin envisioned wasn’t a popular uprising, but rather to “hack” the system in order to break it.

threewayfight.org/the-doge-and

#fascism #Trump #MAGA #USPol #Musk #Thiel #Yarvin #NRx #neoreactionary #elitism #populism

Mix Mistress Alice💄MixMistressAlice@todon.eu
2025-02-23

"Trump’s return isn’t just chaos, it’s a calculated strategy. While liberals dismiss him, Trump understands raw economic power in a way centrists fail to grasp. What is his master plan, and how could it backfire?Meanwhile, Musk & other billionaires are the new ruling class. As capitalism dies, we enter technofeudalism, where corporate overlords control entire infrastructures of power.
And in Europe, elites literally cried over the U.S. pivoting away. Does Europe have any real sovereignty left?"—BreakThrough News

'Trump, Europe’s Collapse & Why Liberals Keep Losing,' with Yanis Varoufakis & Rania Khalek >

youtube.com/watch?v=Ms5-Z7sqiw

#interview #economy #politics #EconomicStrategy #USA #Germany #Ukraine #EU #collapse #TechnoFeudalism #ReserveCurrency #CloudCapital #capitalism #technocracy #TESCREAL #sovereignty #elitism #dollar #energy #demands #WallStreet #finance #privileges #nationalism #fascism #austerity #TradeDeficit

2025-02-18

So, to finally end this infinite rant, Scher's words aren't really news, just a more open elitist position that now, in line with the current political winds, doesn't have to hide behind performative politically correct language. The power of design is now finally demonstrating its true face: design for the powerful.

As usual, apologies for the typos.

Here the original article creativebloq.com/design/ive-ne

/eof

#design #pentagram #capitalism #AI #elitism
#illustration

2025-02-18

So, unless you are illustrating the whole Divine Comedy (Botticelli did it with 92 illustrations, btw), tell me, why would I need 1500 illustrations? Adv is too short lived to make use of it, and if you are expecting that people will browse all of them either online or on an expensive 1500 pages of AI generated illustrations book, than Scher also demonstrates that has no idea on how information and human work.

17/

#design #pentagram #capitalism #AI #elitism #illustration

2025-02-18

an illustration is generally a combination of many layers of information, the more complex the composition, the more detailed the drawing, the more time is needed by the observer to absorb it all. That's why it so often happens that when you look at an illustration for a second or a third time, you notice details that you missed in the first one. That's also why e.g. very messy comic panels or doodles feel overwhelming (on purpose).

16/

#design #pentagram #capitalism #AI #elitism #illustration

2025-02-18

As we've seen in the beginning of this thread, illustrations are specific representation. Contrary to fine art, illustrations are there to tell a story, to literally, cast a light on something:

etymonline.com/word/illustrati

"1500 illustration in the same style" are pointless:

15/

#design #pentagram #capitalism #AI #elitism
#illustration

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