#coopting disruption

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Tech disrupted disruption

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/2024/02/08/permanent-overlords/#republicans-want-to-defund-the-police

Before "disruption" turned into a punchline, it was a genuinely exciting idea. Using technology, we could connect people to one another and allow them to collaborate, share, and cooperate to make great things happen.

It's easy (and valid) to dismiss the "disruption" of Uber, which "disrupted" taxis and transit by losing $31b worth of Saudi royal money in a bid to collapse the world's rival transportation system, while quietly promising its investors that it would someday have pricing power as a monopoly, and would attain profit through price-gouging and wage-theft.

Uber's disruption story was wreathed in bullshit: lies about the "independence" of its drivers, about the imminence of self-driving taxis, about the impact that replacing buses and subways with millions of circling, empty cars would have on traffic congestion. There were and are plenty of problems with traditional taxis and transit, but Uber magnified these problems, under cover of "disrupting" them away.

But there are other feats of high-tech disruption that were and are genuinely transformative – Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, RSS, and more. These disruptive technologies altered the balance of power between powerful institutions and the businesses, communities and individuals they dominated, in ways that have proven both beneficial and durable.

When we speak of commercial disruption today, we usually mean a tech company disrupting a non-tech company. Tinder disrupts singles bars. Netflix disrupts Blockbuster. Airbnb disrupts Marriott.

But the history of "disruption" features far more examples of tech companies disrupting other tech companies: DEC disrupts IBM. Netscape disrupts Microsoft. Google disrupts Yahoo. Nokia disrupts Kodak, sure – but then Apple disrupts Nokia. It's only natural that the businesses most vulnerable to digital disruption are other digital businesses.

And yet…disruption is nowhere to be seen when it comes to the tech sector itself. Five giant companies have been running the show for more than a decade. A couple of these companies (Apple, Microsoft) are Gen-Xers, having been born in the 70s, then there's a couple of Millennials (Amazon, Google), and that one Gen-Z kid (Facebook). Big Tech shows no sign of being disrupted, despite the continuous enshittification of their core products and services. How can this be? Has Big Tech disrupted disruption itself?

That's the contention of "Coopting Disruption," a new paper from two law profs: Mark Lemley (Stanford) and Matthew Wansley (Yeshiva U):

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4713845

The paper opens with a review of the literature on disruption. Big companies have some major advantages: they've got people and infrastructure they can leverage to bring new products to market more cheaply than startups. They've got existing relationships with suppliers, distributors and customers. People trust them.

Diversified, monopolistic companies are also able to capture "involuntary spillovers": when Google spends money on AI for image recognition, it can improve Google Photos, YouTube, Android, Search, Maps and many other products. A startup with just one product can't capitalize on these spillovers in the same way, so it doesn't have the same incentives to spend big on R&D.

Finally, big companies have access to cheap money. They get better credit terms from lenders, they can float bonds, they can tap the public markets, or just spend their own profits on R&D. They can also afford to take a long view, because they're not tied to VCs whose funds turn over every 5-10 years. Big companies get cheap money, play a long game, pay less to innovate and get more out of innovation.

But those advantages are swamped by the disadvantages of incumbency, all the various curses of bigness. Take Arrow's "replacement effect": new companies that compete with incumbents drive down the incumbents' prices and tempt their customers away. But an incumbent that buys a disruptive new company can just shut it down, and whittle down its ideas to "sustaining innovation" (small improvements to existing products), killing "disruptive innovation" (major changes that make the existing products obsolete).

Arrow's Replacement Effect also comes into play before a new product even exists. An incumbent that allows a rival to do R&D that would eventually disrupt its product is at risk; but if the incumbent buys this pre-product, R&D-heavy startup, it can turn the research to sustaining innovation and defund any disruptive innovation.

Arrow asks us to look at the innovation question from the point of view of the company as a whole. Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma" looks at the motivations of individual decision-makers in large, successful companies. These individuals don't want to disrupt their own business, because that will render some part of their own company obsolete (perhaps their own division!). They also don't want to radically change their customers' businesses, because those customers would also face negative effects from disruption.

A startup, by contrast, has no existing successful divisions and no giant customers to safeguard. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain from disruption. Where a large company has no way for individual employees to initiate major changes in corporate strategy, a startup has fewer hops between employees and management. What's more, a startup that rewards an employee's good idea with a stock-grant ties that employee's future finances to the outcome of that idea – while a giant corporation's stock bonuses are only incidentally tied to the ideas of any individual worker.

Big companies are where good ideas go to die. If a big company passes on its employees' cool, disruptive ideas, that's the end of the story for that idea. But even if 100 VCs pass on a startup's cool idea and only one VC funds it, the startup still gets to pursue that idea. In startup land, a good idea gets lots of chances – in a big company, it only gets one.

Given how innately disruptable tech companies are, given how hard it is for big companies to innovate, and given how little innovation we've gotten from Big Tech, how is it that the tech giants haven't been disrupted?

The authors propose a four-step program for the would-be Tech Baron hoping to defend their turf from disruption.

First, gather information about startups that might develop disruptive technologies and steer them away from competing with you, by investing in them or partnering with them.

Second, cut off any would-be competitor's supply of resources they need to develop a disruptive product that challenges your own.

Third, convince the government to pass regulations that big, established companies can comply with but that are business-killing challenges for small competitors.

Finally, buy up any company that resists your steering, succeeds despite your resource war, and escapes the compliance moats of regulation that favors incumbents.

Then: kill those companies.

The authors proceed to show that all four tactics are in play today. Big Tech companies operate their own VC funds, which means they get a look at every promising company in the field, even if they don't want to invest in them. Big Tech companies are also awash in money and their "rival" VCs know it, and so financial VCs and Big Tech collude to fund potential disruptors and then sell them to Big Tech companies as "aqui-hires" that see the disruption neutralized.

On resources, the authors focus on data, and how companies like Facebook have explicit policies of only permitting companies they don't see as potential disruptors to access Facebook data. They reproduce internal Facebook strategy memos that divide potential platform users into "existing competitors, possible future competitors, [or] developers that we have alignment with on business models." These categories allow Facebook to decide which companies are capable of developing disruptive products and which ones aren't. For example, Amazon – which doesn't compete with Facebook – is allowed to access FB data to target shoppers. But Messageme, a startup, was cut off from Facebook as soon as management perceived them as a future rival. Ironically – but unsurprisingly – Facebook spins these policies as pro-privacy, not anti-competitive.

These data policies cast a long shadow. They don't just block existing companies from accessing the data they need to pursue disruptive offerings – they also "send a message" to would-be founders and investors, letting them know that if they try to disrupt a tech giant, they will have their market oxygen cut off before they can draw breath. The only way to build a product that challenges Facebook is as Facebook's partner, under Facebook's direction, with Facebook's veto.

Next, regulation. Starting in 2019, Facebook started publishing full-page newspaper ads calling for regulation. Someone ghost-wrote a Washington Post op-ed under Zuckerberg's byline, arguing the case for more tech regulation. Google, Apple, OpenAI other tech giants have all (selectively) lobbied in favor of many regulations. These rules covered a lot of ground, but they all share a characteristic: complying with them requires huge amounts of money – money that giant tech companies can spare, but potential disruptors lack.

Finally, there's predatory acquisitions. Mark Zuckerberg, working without the benefit of a ghost writer (or in-house counsel to review his statements for actionable intent) has repeatedly confessed to buying companies like Instagram to ensure that they never grow to be competitors. As he told one colleague, "I remember your internal post about how Instagram was our threat and not Google+. You were basically right. The thing about startups though is you can often acquire them.”

All the tech giants are acquisition factories. Every successful Google product, almost without exception, is a product they bought from someone else. By contrast, Google's own internal products typically crash and burn, from G+ to Reader to Google Videos. Apple, meanwhile, buys 90 companies per year – Tim Apple brings home a new company for his shareholders more often than you bring home a bag of groceries for your family. All the Big Tech companies' AI offerings are acquisitions, and Apple has bought more AI companies than any of them.

Big Tech claims to be innovating, but it's really just operationalizing. Any company that threatens to disrupt a tech giant is bought, its products stripped of any really innovative features, and the residue is added to existing products as a "sustaining innovation" – a dot-release feature that has all the innovative disruption of rounding the corners on a new mobile phone.

The authors present three case-studies of tech companies using this four-point strategy to forestall disruption in AI, VR and self-driving cars. I'm not excited about any of these three categories, but it's clear that the tech giants are worried about them, and the authors make a devastating case for these disruptions being disrupted by Big Tech.

What do to about it? If we like (some) disruption, and if Big Tech is enshittifying at speed without facing dethroning-by-disruption, how do we get the dynamism and innovation that gave us the best of tech?

The authors make four suggestions.

First, revive the authorities under existing antitrust law to ban executives from Big Tech companies from serving on the boards of startups. More broadly, kill interlocking boards altogether. Remember, these powers already exist in the lawbooks, so accomplishing this goal means a change in enforcement priorities, not a new act of Congress or rulemaking. What's more, interlocking boards between competing companies are illegal per se, meaning there's no expensive, difficult fact-finding needed to demonstrate that two companies are breaking the law by sharing directors.

Next: create a nondiscrimination policy that requires the largest tech companies that share data with some unaffiliated companies to offer data on the same terms to other companies, except when they are direct competitors. They argue that this rule will keep tech giants from choking off disruptive technologies that make them obsolete (rather than competing with them).

On the subject of regulation and compliance moats, they have less concrete advice. They counsel lawmakers to greet tech giants' demands to be regulated with suspicion, to proceed with caution when they do regulate, and to shape regulation so that it doesn't limit market entry, by keeping in mind the disproportionate burdens regulations put on established giants and small new companies. This is all good advice, but it's more a set of principles than any kind of specific practice, test or procedure.

Finally, they call for increased scrutiny of mergers, including mergers between very large companies and small startups. They argue that existing law (Sec 2 of the Sherman Act and Sec 7 of the Clayton Act) both empower enforcers to block these acquisitions. They admit that the case-law on this is poor, but that just means that enforcers need to start making new case-law.

I like all of these suggestions! We're certainly enjoying a more activist set of regulators, who are more interested in Big Tech, than we've seen in generations.

But they are grossly under-resourced even without giving them additional duties. As Matt Stoller points out, "the DOJ's Antitrust Division has fewer people enforcing anti-monopoly laws in a $24 trillion economy than the Smithsonian Museum has security guards."

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/congressional-republicans-to-defund

What's more, Republicans are trying to slash their budgets even further. The American conservative movement has finally located a police force they're eager to defund: the corporate police who defend us all from predatory monopolies.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #coopting disruption #law and political economy #law #economics #competition #big tech #tech #innovation #acquihires #predatory acquisitions #mergers and acquisitions #disruption #schumpeter #the curse of bigness #clay christensen #josef schumpeter #christensen #enshittiification #business #regulation #scholarship

[h34vybottom]

Reading Mark Lemley and Matthew Wansley's paper, Coopting Disruption, right now and the below segment has made me think about echo chambres and cultic milieus. The power Alphabet already has to enforce cultic milieus is immense. YouTube is full of neo-nazis spreading their toxins and entrapping people into an ever evolving cult driven by endlessly coopting conspiracy theories. We've seen all of this happen on FaceBook already. As Alphabet continues to fund and acquire new tech companies, w/ "AI" being the current fad, they've effectively given themselves more power to entrap people in cults. I believe it was Giovan_H who posted something about how it's concerning how much fascist rhetoric and ideology have been promoted and spread through forum websites (YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.). I find this to be very worrying.

#big tech #coopting disruption #i think this idea needs to be expanded on more #not sure this is a “good post” per se given how little information there is to what I'm saying #I just find this entire debacle to very worrying and quite maddening #For better writing please read Cory Doctorow's article about this same topic on Pluralistic dot net

[neoatlantiscodex]

The Surprising Difference Between Capitalism and Fascism

AKA: There is no such thing as Corporate Capitalism

The main difference between Communism and Fascism is that Communism burnt down the existing power structures to build new ones, while Fascists coopted existed the power structures.

That sounds like something I should prove, but I'd rather just take Hitler's word on it. He literally gave a speech about how Communists weren't doing it right, and Fascism was going to show them how it was done. The wonderful thing about Fascism is that THE Fascists, the ones who, quite literally, wrote the book on Fascism, were not shy about how wonderful they thought Fascism was.

Fascism coopted education, the military, the church, and...

corporations. They nationalized major corporations, and then gave control of it to their friends. If you wanted to control your family's business, you literally had to become friends with the regime. The regime then used these corporations as if they were organs of the government. You don't have to use such direct control, however, all you have to do is create regulation that makes it difficult to have a small business, and then, because you are writing the rules, you can hold the major corporations by the balls.

You see, in a Capitalist economy, major corporations are lumbering giants. Decisions are being made by men so far above the clouds, they can't even fathom what their edicts are doing. Small businesses have no such problems, and can move in where major corporations fail.

That is, unless you create a level of regulation that major corporations can hire a team of sex figure accountants and compliance officers to make sure they are following.

And then small businesses simply cannot.

Let's take the recent worldwide coughing fit. Major corporations need long and broad supply chains, that are easily disrupted. Walmart's shelvers were bare, while smaller super markets were perfectly fine. So, what does the government do? Ban small businesses.

This is not Capitalism.

In Capitalism, major corporations can be formed, but are just as vulnerable to collapse as anyone else. Large corporations are typically formed in industries that need them, (like car manufacturing), through novel industries, (like Amazon and Tesla), or through simple diversification.

A corporation grows as large as it can in a market, and then opens a new business to take advantage of new markets. You grow your cereal company as much as you can, and then start making tooth paste. Then once that has grown, you start making hand soap.

Under Fascism, major corporations grow because the government restricts small businesses from competing with them. If the government provides any protection for major businesses from their smaller competitors, it's - not - Capitalism.

Capitalism relies on competition.

#neo-atlantis codex

[withoutaconscienceorafilter]

I was just reading a paper that started with "Our economy is dominated by five aging tech giants – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft," and my soul died a little inside.

"Aging."

I remember when Microsoft DOS came out and when Amazon, Google, and Facebook were launched. *pain*

It's an interesting paper though.

"Each of them displaced the incumbents that came before them. But in the last twenty years, no company has commercialized a new technology in a way that threatens the tech giants. Why?"

#It's official #I'm old #Tech #my posts #Microsoft #Amazon #Google #Alphabet #Apple #Meta #Facebook #Big Tech #academia

[flatstarcarcosa]

i need to put a hot take here because otherwise it will rot my brain in a bad way but like.

i’m genuinely. i’m tired of fucking hearing posts about people and anxiety. (not personal vent posts, i’m talking ~*~raising awareness~*~ type shit) i’m tired of it because i’m tired of people acting like mild anxiety and more severe anxiety disorders are the end all be all of mental illness and i’m tired of able bodied people ~*~*with anxiety~*~* dominating online disability spaces, coopting language and spaces that aren’t fucking for them, and then being ableist about the people that made the spaces to begin with.

i say this as someone with anxiety issues.

i also say this as someone with physical disabilities and deeper mental health issues that go beyond “phone calls make me nervous.”

phone calls DO make me nervous, checking the mail makes me nervous. i’m in a loop right now where the thought of opening discord or steam, for some reason, is making me have mild panic attacks.

i am not saying anxiety disorders cannot be disruptive, and i’m not saying they’re not their own ball of wax.

i am saying that i don’t give a fuck about your anxiety disorders if you turn around and sling ableist bullshit at other people while talking over them and trying to prop yourself up as some sort of disability advocate in online spaces.

you have an anxiety disorder but are you normal about people with “gross” physical disabilities? you have an anxiety disorder you never shut up about, but do you get uncomfortable when your friend with immune disorders is venting about having skin issues or digestive issues?

you have an anxiety disorder but do you harass physically disabled people when they say “you’re able bodied and this space is not for you?” you have an anxiety disorder but do you tell people with obsessive thoughts and delusions that they’re “scary” and make cruel jokes about it?

you have an anxiety disorder but are you really an ally?

#txt.txt #also like personally my anxiety i don't think is its own disorder anymore. i used to but i think it's just a smaller Eel that spawned from #whatever the Main Eel is that causes all my problems. it's very much less typical anxiety and more obsessive #anxiety as a byproduct of like stress and whatever the fuck else is going on in here. #is it ocd? is it some type b personality disorder? who knows! not me!

[myrfing]

another example of the thing i liked about this event…the columbian ideal of “all men are created equal” is just not lived up to and the contradiction it creates in people raised within it to believe in liberty, justice, progress, and equality but not really being able to live life according to those ideals unless you have power and money which…makes it moot in the first place. it works exactly the same in leithanian as it does in columbia, it’s just not a part of explicit law; policies written to punish for other things like “not having money for insurance” will eventually take out the undesireables or have them be enslaved to labor for the powerful in either case. and then it is not the “fault” of the state, it’s just the homeless and the poor and the impoverished didn’t do enough and are paying a due consequence.

loken was dorothy’s teacher; it’s obvious that he had a great deal of influence on her and both sought to pursue the ideal that “all people are born equal” as a pure concept versus taking into account for all the elements that create inequity because that contradiction is too bizarre to face. our society values fairness and equality; so why is this not reflected in reality? + being indunated with the idea since birth that your poverty and misfortune is always 100% your personal intrinsic individual responsibility and that you must simply have lacked talent or not worked hard if you end up in the margins. dorothy takes it one step forward from her teacher and says “it’s because didn’t have the opportunity to try….because of something they lack” which is also not the problem, the problem is that columbia at its core doesn’t really care about the value of people’s lives or efforts at all. all those ideals are pretty much just nothing and were a total lie regardless of if you made everyone intrinsically “equal” or not. because they already are, as humans, and this was ignored, because it’s all made to mantain a status quo and concentrate power in the preexisting ruling class. the only thing that matters to them is how you can contribute to that; as cheap labor, or as a talented arms developer, or etc.

that all being said it is weird because “awaken” WOULD have drastically disrupted the status quo. because arts usage isn’t like, race, or sex, or something unquantifiable and dictated by immaterial constructed categories: it’s weaponry. the primary function of arts in the game that we see is destructive force. being bass boosted at arts casting is how multiple disenfranchised groups in the game have wrested some level of power and influence whereas they'd normally remain utterly at will of their rulers, i.e. the sarkaz, and reunion. and here’s where the writing gets ??? because the counterargument provided is that it’s too dangerous to give the unionized masses armed power and they would be coopted by the powerful anyway (something that’s kind of like, ubiquitous to every arkn storyline dealing with the subject of revolution lol):

at first silence’s comparison seems wonky (not even counting that last line because ??? that's everyone anyways) because the distribution of diablous shards is limited and within the hands of the ruling class already, and the transmitter by dorothy’s directive would be distributed to literally every single person in columbia at least, but. im guessing ferdinand’s/the colonel’s plan was to distribute the transmitter to a ton of columbian soldiers and officials and take over the hub by sheer numbers, and then carefully control the distribution of the transmitter…but doesn’t that just not account for the fact dorothy had her own literal lake of the stuff and is the sole person who understands the mechanism of her research and had originally developed the transmitter and “machine” for mass and indiscriminate distribution. and also of course at the birth of the machine this small group of original hub members who were loyal to her had the sole control of an entity that could teleport anywhere and completely alter the construct of anything at will. how did ferdinand realistically plan to seize control of it…AND THEY OBVIOUSLY DIDNT LMFAO BECAUSE IT JUST DISINTEGRATED ITSELF BECAUSE THE DUDES IN THE HUB WANTED IT TO? anyway i get it’s supposed to me a bizarre in-itself-not-fully-literal represenation of…well schmovement but man what…

#arkn #obviously even if everyone had equal arts firepower it would be weaponized by columbia for colonial power anyways #but again thats assuming theyd have total control over transmitter distribution and they literally just never did not even from the get go. #there’s literally nothing that could’ve stopped the awaken from hopping borders and juicing people worldwide #then again columbians seem americanlly myopic and maybe then it just wouldnt have the sentiment to be global. i dont know #It Works Like How We Need It To Work In Whatever Moment - arkn #unless there is actually just 0 organized opposition to the established order in columbia #so power distribution would’ve been moot in a totally unified country. i dont know

[goddessactuality]

Anyway, the algorithmic restriction of speech on social media is 100% at the expense of anyone with anything to say that goes against hegemonic power (which operates by funneling actual disruptive energy into like LGBTQIA+ pride and other social movements which, while organically developed, are coopted by power and act both as a pacifier for the people and a money making machine for capital) I find this very dark and the main reason tumblr is the only social media I don't find completely lost to corporate interests at this point

[mwsa-member]

Stories, Legends, and Truths from the Blighted Earth by R.M. Tembreull

MWSA Review Pending  

Author's Synopsis

Stories, Legends, and Truths from the Blighted Earth is a book of fictional narratives and artifacts which progressively knit together a hidden world existing outside what humans perceive as our reality. Earth Mother is sentient, and all manner of life on our planet are Her children to whom She gifts sentience of their own. The “spirit essence” or soul is immortal, and all beings progress through many lives. Within this context, sentient life occupies a hierarchy, where the highest tiers are occupied by elementals and Guardian Spirits who are responsible for preserving and maintaining the Natural Order; while those affiliated, coopted, and corrupted by Chaos are continuously trying to disrupt, and ultimately destroy, the balance. There is no such thing as good and evil, just the continual struggle between order and chaos.

The Blighted Earth’s sentient existence, where all life on the planet is connected, reveals a hidden realm and provides a new understanding of our world through the provided stories and artifacts. These tales are described within the context of real-world events and historical conflicts as told from the perspective of various characters occupying the numerous tiers in the Hierarchy of Sentience. Many commonly understood theories of existence and spirituality are reimagined within a new model of the universe where humankind’s place, and our importance within “the All” is very different from what most of us interpret it to be, including the definition of life and lifeforms.

Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle

Review Genre: Fiction—Horror/Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Number of Pages: 339

Word Count: 116,931

#MWSA Review Pending #2024 Season #Horror/Fantasy/Sci Fi

[hauntedsharkstrawberry]

de Filipinas), in 1785, when compared to other earlier companies in the territories of the House of Bourbon (Rodríguez García 2005), notwithstanding previous failed attempts focused on the Asian trade (Díaz-Trechuelo 1965, 3-30). And yet, the reform process in the Philippines should not be seen only as an imposition from the imperial center but also as an attempt to coopt indianoinitiative, which was continually adapting to the problems that the Galleon trade faced since the late seventeenth century, and mostly, the dwindling profit margins of the trade (Yuste 2007, 269-271). Thus, experiments on the plantation economy —already taking place in Southeast Asia throughout the early modern period (Reid 2015)—and in the regional trade can be seen even before the reform.The Philippines’ distinctiveness with respect to other peripheries of the Spanish colonial world is explained by the distance of the archipelago from other imperial centers as well as by its location in Southeast Asia. In addition, its territorial model was more autonomous when compared with other Spanish possessions, resulting from its geographical distance and dispersion. War disruptions also changed the rules of the game, but as explained hereafter, trade was relatively stable, for necessary readjustments and adaptations were constantly made. As we will see, it was imperial competition rather than the wars —from the British in particular—6thatworried Spanish policymakers when dealing with the Philippines. Another difference of the archipelago vis-à-visother Spanish territorieswas that, together with Cuba and Puerto Rico, it remained in the Spanish imperial sphere throughout the nineteenth century —even though, as Ruth de Llobet (2012 and 2020) has shown, serious challenges to the authority of the Crown also took place there. Thus, although the nineteenth-century Philippines were opened by the 6Together with the widely quoted British invasion of Manila between 1762 and 1764, British advancements in the Asian trade should be mentioned, especially as they increased after the 1784 Commutation Act (Mui and Mui 1984), which drastically reduced the import taxes on the Chinese tea, thus boosting its demand and trade; also the 1786 establishment of the British colony of Penang as an East India Company outpost. In addition, and during the Nootka conventions, the transfer of Luzon to the HonourableCompany was contemplated (Furber 1935).

[girlsmoonsandstars]

I just wanted to say I appreciated your homelessness activism post so much. A few months ago an incident of mass rape was brought to light in my town. The perpetrators were several owners and investors of three prominent local restaurants, and the assaults took place within the establishments after hours. A protest group was created, and within weeks the movement had been completely coopted by our resident radlib activist group. The protest then shifted its focus to general queer/trans/anticapitalist slogan touting. Two quiet, third degree rape arrests and bails later and the restaurants are still open and no one cares anymore.

The optimist in me wants to say that most people mean well, but sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes people’s sense of injustice is manufactured, and not based on the actual human suffering in front of them. It’s frustrating, and a pretty huge part of why I talk about the difference between radical feminist theory based on women's consciousness raising efforts and “queer” theory born out of academics trying to say something new without saying anything real.

The pessimist in me thinks the disruption of organization efforts is intentional, and designed to prevent real change.

I commend the people who started the protest group, and I’m sorry you had to witness such a spectacular failure of our Justice system. I wish we could do more.

[glompcat]

I was thinking about the Thirteenth Doctor’s era and The Timeless Child, as you do, and I was once again struck by how brilliantly it addresses one of the largest elephants in the room with Doctor Who, which is of course The White Man’s Burden.

Doctor Who has for the vast majority of its run been about how much better everything would be if a White British Man showed up and sorted out everyone else’s problems for them. To further this discomfort, throughout both the modern and classic shows we see the Doctor interact with all manner of deeply problematic figures and moments in British history and treat them with defference and respect. The Doctor is an Anglophile, the show merrily jokes to explain away the Doctor’s strange obsession and love for England even during some of the country’s darkest chapters (I recently watched it so Season 2′s The Crusade is particuarly standing out in my mind at the moment as an example of this, but it really is everywhere).

I’ve posted about it before, but I truly and deeply believe that Series 11 is where we first start to see a real questioning of the British Imperial narrative that was left unquestioned in Doctor Who for so long. The end of Series 12 on the other hand begins the vital process of recontextualizing the Doctor’s character inorder to decouple them from The White Man’s Burden.

The encounters with racism stop being ~ The Doctor punches a rich lord in the Victorian Era when he says something overtly racist that every modern audience member would comfortably be able to identify as racist without having to do any sort of self examination on their own part ~ and start instead to focus on questions of when it is and is not appropriate for outside forces to act. 

In Rosa, the very first episode of Doctor Who written by a person of color since the show began in 1963, we are told that the Doctor can not and should not do anything in Alabama during the 1960s because it is not their place to coopt that momement. They may admire the courage of activists like Rosa Parks, but their role is confined to confrontations with fellow time travelers. Rather than interfere with a situation they have no buisness getting involved in they stay in their lane.

Demons of the Punjab, the second ever episode of Doctor Who to be written by a person of color, is perhaps my all time favorite episode of the show. The more I think about it, the more I love it. This unfortunately means it is hard for me to sum up in a few sentances just why I find it so endlessly brilliant. I am going to push myself to try though. This is the first episode of Doctor Who focused on issues of immigration that felt, to me as the child of an immigrant (granted my father came to the United States, not the United Kindom), recognizable as a narrative I could connect to. We’re just two seasons removed from The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion, and we’ve gone from “refugees who are not comfortable with fully assimilating into a dominent culture are terrorists” to a stunning ode to how colonization ruins lives and shatters families, as well as how inter-generational knowlege and cultural transmission are sacred things that connect us (us in this case being the descendants of immigrants) to a past we can never fully know or understand.

Series 12′s The Timeless Children takes these ideas and disrupts our assumptions of the Doctor’s identity, forever changing some of the core framings of the narrative.

It reframes the Doctor’s travels through time and space, so that rather than keep them as the journeys of a priviliged member of the most priviliged race who would rather spend their time dealing with other people’s problems than face any of their own (eternally shrugging their shoulders and claiming Gallifrey’s fuckery is not their responsibility, so much so that they disown the one incarnation who Got Involved) we are told that the Doctor was an immigrant to Gallifrey, one who faced hardship and abuse upon arriving there stemming from that which made them different. Their first adopted mother literally changes them, altering their DNA just as much as they alter their own species’ so that in the end there no longer is any genetic difference between the Doctor and any other Time Lord. After all, we know that the Doctor’s biodata is very much that of a Time Lord’s. This, for me viewing as the child of an immigrant and as a member of a minority religion, is recognizable as the violence of assimilation (and despite what The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion might tell you, assimilation is VIOLENCE and is not actually anything close to an acceptable trade off for a safe place to live). Then as time progresses, the Doctor’s memory of their true origin is wiped, leaving them fully unaware of who they really are or where they came from. 

This immediatly called to mind for me both Ryan’s total lack of knowlege of any kind of Black history in Rosa, and Yaz’s viseral pain when presented with the fact that her grandmother’s life before coming to England was totally unlike anything she could have ever imagined in Demons of the Punjab. Those marked as “the other” (and lol at how that term already exists in Doctor Who lore and applies to the Doctor in ways that call to mind this arc) in the West are constantly asked to disenfranchize themselves from their identity. Silmultaniously Western actors regularly claim aspects of other cultures as their own, and then demand others recognize those things as hallmarks of their own society totally seperate from their original context (a very prominent example of this would be the way British people understand and interact with tea). 

Since the Time Lords are more than anything else a massive joke about the British nobility, it makes sense that within their extreamly xenophobic society an immigrant who had a major impact on the course of their devopment is subjected to a process of alienization, literally becoming alien to their original state, and upon fulfilling their use for their new home their presence is erased and that which was taken from them is claimed as inheriet to the dominent society. 

One is then adopted by a family that by all accounts did love them, did not mistreat them and whose affection was returned by the Doctor. This second adoption takes place after the assimilation process has been completed, long after the Doctor’s usefullness as an other has been exploited in full and the Time Lords no longer see any reason to treat them in a manner unlike any other member of their people. We know that the Doctor still had trouble fully fitting into the society around them, but this discomfort gets attributed to everything and anything other than the truth of their violent assimilation. It all can play out exactly as every text written before The Timeless Children describes (but not all of them at once, of course, because quite a few of them are entirely incompatable with one another) but with the addition of the most recent season we can read the trauma of assimilation into the Doctor’s behavior. I also want to be clear that in this new context the Doctor is just as much a Time Lord as I am an American. My father may not have been born here, nor was my mother’s father or her mother’s parents, but at the end of the day that is inconsiquential. The Doctor is still a Time Lord, however what that means has shifted.

There are of course all kinds of other implications these new elements lend to the text. Personally I find myself constantly returning to the knowlege that the Doctor was twice adopted (something I admit gives me a personal thrill since my father was also adopted multiple times, but I digress) and how it makes the Doctor’s habit of forming found family units and adopting children all the more meaningful for me. Their interations with their companions, from their (most likely probably) biological family member Susan all the way to the Fam can be understood through a new lens, and since the ways old texts gain new contexts and meanings making them feel like new stories all over again is for me personally one of the greatest joys of big box franchise fiction, I’m increadibly pleased by this new addition to the lore. 

The Doctor’s perspective post The Timeless Children is suddenly accesable to audience members who were initally left out of that story of a priviliged kid who didn’t like/want responsiblity so they stole a junked up old vehicle and ran away. So many of the show’s behind the scenes materials like to say that there is something innately British about Doctor Who, and now immigrant perspectives are being welcomed into that umbrella of Britishness.

Further (returning to my original point about the show’s uncomfortable relationship to The White Man’s Burden) it takes the previous framing of the Doctor and their journeys and turns them on their head, transforming the Doctor’s travels into those of someone looking for a sense of belonging they have never been able to claim, while also attempting to make sense of the violence that had been enacted against them they were denied any knowlege of by the same forces that committed that violence - something you can see play out over and over and over again in Earth History, and British History in particular, thus explaining the Doctor’s fixation. Even if the Doctor is unaware of it, there is a Reason they do not feel as if solving Gallifrey’s problems is in any way their responsibility. They already gave Gallifrey so much more than has ever been demanded of any other Time Lord. 

I don’t really have a conclusion to write here because my thoughts on this story (like all of Doctor Who) are still evolving and of course are very much just my own personal reflections on this silly franchise that happens to be my horrible ADHD fueled special interest of the moment. Plus Series 13 may shock me by going in a radically different direction, who knows. So I am just going to say that I very much appreciate the ways the Thirteenth Doctor era so far has been challenging the British established view of history and is very much making good on its promise of creating a more inclusive show for its viewers, not just in its casting choices but in the messaging of the narrative itself.

#Doctor Who #long post #I am just rambling sorry #I normally just put this kind of thing in a google doc and call it a day #but I am really trying to interact with fandom more sooooo

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“One of the most striking features of prison social topography is the cadre of dominant inmates, the elites. These prisoners have translated pre-prison reputations, physical prowess, or special skills into the power to influence a wide range of prison outcomes. Their prominence in prison accounts for the extensive literature devoted to descriptions and explanations of elite role behavior (Schrag 1954; Irwin and Cressey 1962; Carroll 1974). Beyond descriptions of the "argot" roles they play and the subcultures they represent (Bowker 1977), a central theme in this literature has been these elites' informal contribution to prison social control. For example, Reimer (1937) states that inmate leaders act as agents of social control by defining proper prison conduct for other inmates. More to the point, Cloward (1960, see also McCleery 1960) concludes that 'the inmate elite constitute the single most important source of social control in the prison," achieving the order and stability desired not  only by the elites but also by the officials. In recent years several researchers have shown that inmate leaders of cliques or gangs foster prison peace by informally arbitrating among hostile groups (Jacobs 1974; Davidson 1974; Carroll 1974).

In most prison organizations these elites share many of the stability-and-order goals of prison authorities. They are not, of course, motivated by a desire to help the staff per se such an orientation is the province of "rats" and "square Johns." Instead, inmate elites control other prisoners to protect their own statuses, their marketable influence with key prison officials, and their control over the prison economy and rackets. This elite power over the inmate masses is necessarily tentative and informal (Cloward 1960; Sykes 1958). Compliance by the inmates rests largely on the elites' ability to reflect the anti-authority values of the traditional convict code. Even where their actions help maintain peace, elites cannot be overtly pro-administration into do so would undermine their status with the inmate population. Indeed, where collusion between elites and prison authorities does occur in the interests of order maintenance, it tends to be situation-specific or based on particular relationships.

Although most accounts depict prison elites as contributing to prison order in the informal manner described above, there are cases in which prison elites, coopted by prison officials, have maintained more formal control over other prisoners. In such cases, the elites' authority over their fellow prisoners rests not on the defiance of or covert cooperation with officials, but rather on a formal alliance with them. Rarely discussed in the prison literature, this practice is not uncommon. The overt or official use of strong, cooperative inmates has been reported, for example, in the Soviet Union (Solzhenitsyn 1973; 1975) India (Adam n.d.; Bhattacharya 1958), Australia (Shaw 1966), and French Guyana (Charriere 1970). Moreover, several writers have indicated that this form of prisoner control is centuries old (see Shaw 1966; Pendry 1974; Klockars 1974).

Extreme examples in this country are found in the recent history of the plantation prisons in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas (see McWhorter 1981; Mouledous 1962; Murton and Hyams 1969). Although the formal use of elites by prison officials disappeared from these southern prisons a decade ago, the practice continued in some Texas prisons into the 1980s. In this model, the elites' control was sanctioned by the authorities, not by the general population or a convict code.

It is axiomatic that in large maximum security American prisons, some inmates or groups of inmates will dominate others. If that dominance is unquestioned and predictable, then the prison environment can be stable, even safe. Conversely, if one power group falls, then others will move in to fill the vacuum; such power shifts within the informal prisoner world are always disruptive and often dangerous (see Colvin, 1982). Where elites have been coopted into serving as formal agents of institutional regulation, officials can both increase daily control within the cellblocks and maximize general stability by ensuring that there is never a power vacuum.”

- James W. Marquart a & Ben M. Crouch, “Coopting the kept: Using inmates for social control in a southern prison,” Justice Quarterly, 1:4 (1984): pp. 491-493.

#social control #prison community #prison elite #life inside #prison administration #american prison system #prison guards #inmate hierarchy #crime and punishment #history of crime and punishment #penology #sociology #academic research #research quote

[cultureofresistance]

...imagine how the laws are going to be rewritten now. Imagine how security procedures are going to be rewritten now. It’s almost a guarantee that it’s going to be much harder now to hold demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and in the vicinity of the Capitol. It’s going to be harder for movements legally, for movements like the Black Lives movement, for example, to go out on the streets again. There are sure to be more restrictions. And there are sure to be more restrictions on speech, through the newly empowered corporate censors, like Facebook and Twitter and so on, and perhaps through the government itself. "I think we have to be clear-eyed, and don’t let this Trumpist movement coopt the idea of rebellion. Rebellion against injustice is a good thing. The problem is that they — and the U.S. system is indeed unjust and murderous. But they are rebelling against the aspects of the U.S. system that happen to be good: the democracy, the tolerance, the chance for a democratic space in organizing. That’s what they’re rebelling against, on behalf of evils, like racism, like madness, like blind obedience to the leader, Trump. But we have to be careful and stand against both that, but also the establishment, which is still the main power in the United States and that is now in the middle of gutting the American poor, the American working class. That has to be rebelled against, just as we resist these fascistic forces. And it’s not easy to do both at the same time, but it’s necessary.

Allan Nairn, “Americans Are Now Getting a Mild Taste of Their Own Medicine” of Disrupting Democracy Elsewhere | Democracy Now!

#allan nairn #amy goodman #democracy now!

[thewealthrace]

Watch out Wall Street, Capital Markets disruption is coming

Watch out Wall Street, Capital Markets disruption is coming

Wall Street is good at managing through disruption as it is a dynamic, competitive ecosystem not a group think hierarchy. There will be some Wall Street firms that seize the opportunities from disruption, while other firms suffer a Blockbuster/Kodak type fate. Some Wall Street firms are coopting Direct Listings and we can expect some Wall Street firms to coopt Security Tokens. Whatever happens we…

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#Capital #Coming #disruption #Markets #Street #Wall #Watch

[chthonic-cassandra]

Pain is a reprieve from mediated experience. It cannot be coopted by language: in its visceral alertness, pain disrupts the torpor or "language rules" and denials. As such, it closes what Harris (1998) calls the hallowed split between word and deed; it forces denial to succumb to that absolute knowing that exists outside of linguistic knowledge. Whatever torture is called, whatever "principle" is used for its justification, the victim's body registers the elemental truth of violation. If to witness pain is to experience doubt (as per Scarry, 1985), it may also be to experience an existential seduction. Through the veil of doubt, the witness encounters another for whom all doubt has been extinguished. In pain's ultimate moment, just before the suffering self disappears into oblivion, the tortured exists at the very apex of full presence and full revelation. Such a moment possess an elemental allure: it is a breach in the wall of human insularity and isolation. It is this breach of human isolation that partly accounts for our pop culture of violence. The more family and culture alienate us from experiencing ourselves and others as really real, really present, and really embodied, the greater the seduction of human violence. And because the alternates of agony inevitably collapses into the inertia of disappearance, because coma, death, and dissociation render opaque that which has just been exquisitely revealed, the perpetrator may require the endless repetition of pain. And for the survivor-perpetrator, the awakening of torture and the disappearance of the torture victim comforts even as it frustrates. It reassures the survivor-perpetrator that it is possible to disappear from bodily extremity; it is the disappearance of the survivor who perpetually longs to disappear. But it is also an illusory encounter in the execution itself. This time, the survivor can watch, vigilant and alert, for the precise moment when the tortured shift from presence to absence. This time, the perpetrator imagines he will miss nothing, and so, finds mutuality in the area of solitude.

Sue Grand, The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective

#fuck #trauma #torture #save her with fear #embodiment #pain

[ippoemessageboards-blog]

Message Boards Inspire Development

Message boards are becoming an increasing number of common every day, educating, motivating, as well as sometimes enjoyable. Message boards, digital, digital, and also often composed of light producing diodes (LEDs), have lots of applications, with the number relatively raising every day. As well as, as a wonderful business device, they stimulate performance as well as innovation.

Ancestors of message boards include marquees, posters, as well as indications with compatible letters. Modern versions supplant the character as organizing device with a lighted dot or pixel. Instead of rows of characters you have a two-dimensional selection of pixels, each of which can be individually switched on or off.

This kind of public interaction has been prevalent for a long time above or adjacent to freeways, notifying drivers to concerns in advance such as mishaps, hold-ups, or other quickly transforming events. In less urgent scenarios they show up before institutions, churches, and also other institutions as informative signs the material of which is sluggish to alter and reasonably secure.

Even so, the idea behind message boards is quite enduring, and has actually been used to generate both message and graphics for several years. In binary form, each pixel is either on or off at any moment, and the resulting dot matrix portrays a photo or textual message. Any individual who has actually seen college football stadium card sections understands this principle completely.

The pixel doesn't need to be binary yet among a set of colors, making for even more dramatic and also efficient messaging. Since LEDs are monochromatic, a set of three of them (each in a various primary color) needs to be used to represent each pixel. But this does not position a big problem, since LEDs can be made in extremely tiny packaging and also their durability is some 50 to 100 times to that of incandescent light bulbs.

Whatever is to be represented, whether message or graphics, needs to be mapped into a 2D collection of pixels. Given that a character set mapping can be established ahead of time, it is reasonably fast as well as simple to map text on the fly, which comes in handy for updating web traffic conditions. Mapping pictures, and particularly the vibrant mapping of animations, is a lot more arduous as well as involved.

Up until now our discussion has actually been mainly concerning message boards as informational devices, which, per se, do not truly stimulate advancement in a company setting. Nevertheless, when they are used as business devices and as far better ways for interacting, they do enhance productivity and also cost-free creative thought. A crucial element is the assimilation of messaging systems with integrated clock systems.

Such integration accomplishes much more exact and also effective scheduling, and also it also makes interdepartmental purchases quicker, smoother, as well as much less disruptive (or perhaps non-disruptive). The integrated clocks keep every little thing humming, and also the synchronized messaging, showed on sign as fetched from a data source, makes sure that all departments are frequently on the exact same page.

This dual synchrony eliminates prospective hiccups as well as decreases transactional delays between separate divisions to zero, all of which cultivates enhanced performance. In addition, if traffic jams are occurring they pop out like sore thumbs. This in turn draws up a course to much more effective options and other ingenious reasoning.

The various other wonderful attribute is that emergency scenarios can be managed really well. If an abrupt notification needs to be broadcast the message board can be coopted manually and the alert presented to everyone. Assuming that audible signals such as whistles or bells are attached to the system, noise can be used to ensure all able bodies are taking note.

There are even more uses for these interaction devices. As an example, they can be put up in break spaces to convey info as well as present statements, as well as in many cases they can work as countdown timers to signify completion of break. In conclusion, message boards bring firms right into the 21st century as well as motivate development.

emergency led message board