iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

If you actually want to understand this perspective, which is more affective & functional than disaffected & precise, you have to consider the directional valence of the act of adding nuance Technically, it's true that Biden couldn't JUST make a phone call and surely didn't WANT the genocide...

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Sorry for the crazy long reply thread but there's a clear logical throughline for why lefties are always being weird online and the only way out is through more infighting

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Establishment Dems have reaffirmed they would rather lose to the right than concede to the left (especially visible in Mamdani's election), which ultimately undermines both these theories of change and points toward revolutionary violence, so I guess we'll see how anti-trans Dems do next

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In the moment, voting Dem *might* have short term benefits over abstaining, but over the next election cycles, real pressure on Dems to actually take disciplined ethical positions has more ethical benefit and (allegedly) holds them accountable for always shifting right

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The status quo of voting for the lesser of two evils assumes a theory of change that voting Dem allows incremental improvement over time But this doesn't hold from a Leftist perspective: Dems only make improvements under pressure, otherwise they often make things worse (eg to court Republicans)

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Similarly, when we examine the Theory of Change motivating different strategic approaches, we endlessly demand nuance from those abstaining (to motivate Dem candidates: take our issues seriously or lose) but not from those conceding (hope Dems change for no reason??)

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This has a strong historical basis in critical theory, which has identified structural biases where we collectively demand more nuance from marginalized groups than we do from centralized groups, functionally maintaining the injustices baked into the status quo (eg, maintaining the genocide)

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But the question that often sours Leftists is: why did you say this? Why are you putting your effort against us instead of putting it against the genocide? We might see this as a false premise (precision makes a stronger theory of change to end the genocide), but it functionally looks pro-genocide

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Personally, I think rigorous adherence to truth and nuance is an important part of creating a powerful and robust movement, but it's historically true that affective shorthand is functionally more effective (at least short term) than academic precision. There's a time & place for everything

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Whether you actually agree with these positions is immaterial: what is material (and thus important to The Left) is how your critique contributes to The Cause Is your nuance aiding the anti-genocide effort, or is it pushing back on momentum-building propaganda? Punching Right or Punching Left?

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But these phrases are an affective social media shorthand for the more defensible nuance: 1. As Commander in Chief, The President Of The United States has dramatic power over conditions of arms distribution to Israel 2. Biden explicitly prioritized the US-Israel relationship over Palestinian lives

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Having an informed public [that knows what Mel looks like] is only one of many systemic failures that distance our extremely limited practice of democracy [voting on bsky] from our ideological principles of community engagement & empowerment [making Mel feel loved. Or, uh, fucked]

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Important here to disambiguate democracy in practice from Democracy as a general principle Governance by The People [followers] is not meaningfully instantiated by largely symbolic direct votes on representatives or issues [would-ability] fully controlled & willfully misinterpreted by elites [Mel]

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Economics is all about incentivizing behavior, but we can incentivize all kinds of work without purposely constructing an uncomfortable underclass to exploit We have the resources to restructure work to be comfortable and equatably rewarded so that jobs are voluntary and still worthwhile

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Modeling literacy as a mode of engaging with cultures rather than observing them as if from the outside (disavowing the subjectivity which makes culture meaningful) puts Information back into an experiential context where it serves as a tool for clarity rather than as a resource to be possessed

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I've thought a lot in my biostats program about how to use statistical relationships and distribution structures pedagogically to more fully recognize the messiness of interdependence that pervades the sensation of cultural unities without reducing it to numeric trendcasting. Excited to read!

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The masculine urge to enclose common experiences in unrelated gender markers for exclusivity points

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Dan dragging in someone from his group to do something morally dubious for his own benefit that they immediately regret and disavow is, for better or for worse, extremely on brand

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Parties in the past used to build electoral communities with solidaristic agendas, and could be held accountable to pass policy for labor rights and gender rights and civil rights that now Dems have decided can be sacrificed for Republican votes. How do we hold them accountable now?

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I would rather have a party organized against fascism that we can leverage to build electoral momentum, rather than one only organized around electioneering, deferring antifascism until they have a perfect trifecta and suppressing the antifascists that threaten their votes. And I hope you would too!

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Aren't you tired of defending a party that doesn't defend you? That needs you to change your interests instead of listening to what you actually want? Party power is not just passable policy, but cultivating an environment to pass policy we actually want on principles we actually care about.

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Actually doing policy is not a meaningful goal in itself - the goal is to improve the common welfare while representing and protecting us. Dems have had power, over and over again, but because it wasn't totalizing supermajorities they said the only thing they could do is apocalyptic bipartisanship.

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Being real now, this is where I think we're disagreeing. You can't separate political advocacy from political campaigns because the rhetoric you choose, the donors you court, the party members and volunteers that constitute your stakeholders directly inform the agenda the party is willing to act on.

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Sorry, I'm just trying to be as viscerally unpleasant as possible since I've been getting belittled and thrown under the bus for 10+ years for pleasantly conceding my votes to Dems who do not even support the bare minimum and that hasn't been working. I'll try being more unpleasant, I promise

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I agree. Have Democrats tried to throttle the outright fascist beast by appealing to its beastlings with subtle fascist candidates that merely want to firebomb Iran with proper procedural guidance? Have we tried mocking any voters who don't want to try the subtle fascist approach?

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Since we're a very pragmatic party, we know the most practical priority is power. It's more important to reliably concede your voting power for the good of the party than it is to reliably use that power to advocate for marginalized groups ✊

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Some people assume our votes are a means to achieving democratic representation, our ends, but this is wrong Representation is a means to achieving the real ends: the votes themselves. The real base of the Dem party is people who will reliably vote, for Dems or Republicans, regardless of policy

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Sunny Moraine @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

^^^ sure we can imagine Shen using this as a self-insert space to work through early transition by showing the problems with the "feminine man" demand and showing Audrey actually overcome struggle through transition but that's just imagination. So much to hope for from someone still ostensibly cis

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Reposted by Egghead

I think about this essay all the time

It has also occluded something deeper. The philosopher Mark Wilson has observed that concepts often appear stable while the work they do shifts entirely as they move between domains. He calls this "wandering significance." "Decision" is wandering now. In the military context it means the system's output, a targeting nomination scored and forwarded. In journalism and tech criticism it means much the same, the thing the AI got wrong. In neither of these does it mean what it used to mean, which is a person choosing to do something for which they could be held accountable. People are still making decisions in that sense. Someone decided to compress the kill chain. Someone decided that deliberation was latency. Someone decided to build a system that produces a thousand targeting decisions per hour and call them high-quality. Someone decided to start this war. Several hundred people are sitting on Capitol Hill, refusing to stop it. Calling it an "AI problem" gives those decisions, and those people, a place to hide.

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The woke left is why we couldn't just pretend racism was over and we lived in a post-racial America. History was supposed to be over, just a story for the books. Why can't we just move on? Isn't it violence to ask America to change any more? Republicans need to defend against this at all costs.

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Reposted by Egghead

Thaddeus is a girl's name 🏳️‍⚧️ @thaddeus.zone · 18/09/2026

oh hey, some of them are saying it now! we aren't worth the effort; there's too few of us. fun fact: if you cut loose a target of fascism b/c you're SURE it'll help you win, you've lost. the fascism is already in you.

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Reposted by Egghead

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026

it's funny but also a reminder that the fundamental premise here is that a Black man can't be objective when talking about race while a white man can because Black people do identity politics and white people do facts and this my friends is what I have named "white empiricism"

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Reposted by Egghead

Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Bisexual of the Blade (Alt-text or DIE) @shengokai.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026

Materially, what banning trans folks from participation in sports, in women's spaces, in public spaces, does is create a case for doing the same thing to someone else. It erodes all of our protections, protections which folks have died for.

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Reposted by Egghead

Night of the Abigail @popeguilty.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Me throwing a disposable minority under the bus: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Me getting grabbed and pulled down with them: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Precarity is a big piece of it; without faith in market/government responsibility and social supports that fill the gaps, the same relative income + savings and the same real purchasing power ("I'm doing fine right now") don't translate to the same sense of security ("the economy is fine right now")

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Agreed - inflation is a specific metric that's doing fine, but it's also a catchall term for losing perceived purchasing power. After weak wage growth + slow recovery from 2008 + distrust in govt + distrust in corporations + fear of covid-like catastrophes, most of us perceive a lot of bad vibes

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This is my read on it too - if we're talking about financial stress, perceived purchasing power is more important than the actual purchases. Even without incurring the actual cost, anxiety about the opportunity itself means fewer degrees of freedom in financial decisions, and that's stressful!

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Truly unthinkable in 2026 to act like hypothetical AI "opportunities" can be divorced from the real AI applications accelerating environmental destruction and socio-ecological alienation via capital & power accumulation. Gore is coping with total ideological defeat by conceding Green Growth Theory.

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Egghead @abstractivism.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Which do we think has more human autonomy: an AI with infinite resources made to gather intel by any means necessary, oh btw here's a training set with a bunch of hacking methods to get it, Or Will, who is so negatively polarized that any evidence against his claim triggers automatic dismissal?

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Sharp readers might notice that "trans" didn't even come up and that's the point! The violence that marginalizes trans people is a concentrated part of the same hierarchical violence that marginalizes all of us in different ways

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Maximally, we should treat sex at birth like private medical data. Not necessary for legal documentation, not necessary for sports. We can stratify by more relevant traits. Gendered violence should be addressed by stopping the violence, not by reinforcing the social hierarchy that genders it!

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The whole point of the Left is that we are committed to the coalition because our coalition is built on our commitments to each other That is the strength of universal solidarity: working together to support all those groups through ideological resolutions that serve everyone (even Republicans!)

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