"we have our collective science-fiction/visionary fiction writing workshops. Our premise is that if we want worlds that work for more of us, we have to have more of us involved in the visioning process. One of the ways we perpetuate individualism is by ideating alone, literally coming up with ideas in solitude and then competing to bring them to life. Our workshops are designed to encourage collaborative ideation. Together we identify issues that are relevant to the local community and build a world in which to explore the issue and possible solutions. In each workshop, we start out by asking ourselves what in our community needs vision, with the idea that we can apply our collective ideation to it like a healing salve." -- adrienne maree brown
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nigini finished reading A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
"All my life I had lived with a strong sense of morality. How do you give it up? How do you do things you thought you’d never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives?"
nigini started reading A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones in …
nigini wants to read In the Eye of the Wild by Sophie Lewis

In the Eye of the Wild by Nastassja Martin, Sophie Lewis
After enduring a vicious bear attack in the Russian Far East's Kamchatka Peninsula, a French anthropologist undergoes a physical and …
nigini finished reading The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
"So Earth, Terra, meant both the soil and the planet, two meanings and one. But to the Athsheans soil, ground, earth was not that to which the dead return and by which the living live: the substance of their world was not earth, but forest. Terran man was clay, red dust. Athshean man was branch and root. They did not carve figures of themselves in stone, only in wood."
nigini wants to read Coders by Clive Thompson
nigini commented on Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
"I’ve watched several public takedowns, call-outs, and other grievances take place on social and mainstream media. Some of those have been of strangers, but recently I’ve had the experience of seeing people I know and love targeted and taken down. In most cases, very complex realities get watered down into one flawed aspect of these people’s personalities, or one mistake or misunderstanding. A mob mentality takes over then, an evisceration of character that is punitive, traumatizing, and isolating."
(...)
"But lately, as the attacks grow faster and more vicious, I wonder: is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us?I’ve had tons of conversations with people who, in these moments of public flaying, avoid …
"I’ve watched several public takedowns, call-outs, and other grievances take place on social and mainstream media. Some of those have been of strangers, but recently I’ve had the experience of seeing people I know and love targeted and taken down. In most cases, very complex realities get watered down into one flawed aspect of these people’s personalities, or one mistake or misunderstanding. A mob mentality takes over then, an evisceration of character that is punitive, traumatizing, and isolating."
(...)
"But lately, as the attacks grow faster and more vicious, I wonder: is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us?I’ve had tons of conversations with people who, in these moments of public flaying, avoid stepping up on the side of complexity or curiosity because in the back of our minds is the shared unspoken question: when will y’all come for me?"
(...)
"destroying a person doesn’t destroy all of the systems that allow harmful people to do harm. These takedowns make it seem as if massive problems are determined at an individual level, as if these individuals set a course as children to become abusers, misogynists, racists, liars."
(...)
"The places I’m drawn to in movement espouse a desire for transformative justice—justice practices that go all the way to the root of the problem and generate solutions and healing there, such that the conditions that create injustice are transformed."
nigini wants to read The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully …
nigini commented on Collective Courage by Jessica Gordon Nembhard
"Continuous education is one of the international principles of cooperation and an important strategy for cooperative economic development and business success. The success and growth of many cooperatives appear to depend on education strategies—orientation and training about both what it means to be a good co-op member and how to operate in and manage a particular business. Future co-op business development also depends on reaching young people with knowledge about alternative economic structures and cooperative economics, as well as experiences with entrepreneurship."
nigini wants to read Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler

Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and …
nigini commented on Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
"Solidarity and an ever-expanding commitment to justice emerge from contact with the complex realities of injustice. This is exactly how movements are built, as people become connectedto each other and as one urgent issue unspools into a broader vision of social transformation."
nigini finished reading Slow Down by Brian Bergstrom
"We are living in an era where mutual aid and trust in others has been thoroughly dismantled by the forces of neoliberalism. The only way to rebuild these trust relationships is through face-to-face community building and local municipal politics, at least at the start.
There are surely those who say that such humble actions will never bring about change in time. But communities, regional associations, and social movements whose reach seems restricted to the local are finding ways to link up with comrades all around the world in solidarity, and it is here that hope for the future resides. We are already seeing how various local movements are beginning to construct networks with other movements around the world to fight global capitalism. As Via Campesina puts it, “Globalize the Struggle, Globalize Hope!” "
nigini commented on A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark
"The state becomes the manager of the representations through which class society as a whole comes to know and regulate itself. The rise of a vectoralist class put an end to this arrangement. The vectoral class uses the state to extend and defend the privatization of information. It attacks the socialized science, culture, communication and education that other ruling classes for the most part left in the hands of the state. “There is an intellectual land grab going on.”"
Any similarity with the state of the big tech and its "AI" development is NOT a coincidence!!!
nigini commented on Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
"There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work. We need to go beyond having a critique/counter analysis/alternate systemic plan for society — we have to actually do everything differently, aligned with a different set of core principles for existence. Especially our movement building. How do we live compassion, justice, love, accessibility, in alignment with this planet and with the people on it? How do we live our values?"