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Nish D

@acaciathorns.bsky.social
204 followers 461 following 181 posts

Dreaming solidarity & decolonisation. We all grow & change; give space for transformation. views mine. #AuDHD (they/them)

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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
At what point will people start using cosmetic surgery to reshape themselves to match AI ideals? Of course these models are shaped on racist misogynistic ableist eugenicist data (and exploitative human labour). They are hyperreal, but they reify those biases, and normalise them.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Where does this idea that Andy Burnham is left-wing come from? I find little to no evidence materially (from Manchester), even if his rhetoric is different. For example, he seems to agree with the expansion of policing, increased military spending, and supports corporations (esp US Big Tech).
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
The Russia-Ukraine war already showed us how much fertiliser is essential for global agriculture, especially when "international development" and the Green Revolution made farmers across the world massively dependent on fertiliser use to feed ALL of us. carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202...
As in the 2022 crisis, poorer countries will suffer the most. As Carnegie nonresident scholar Adam Tooze noted, the countries whose fertilizer use (and yields) fell most in 2022 included Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. The fertilizer shortage of 2022, caused by the loss of many Russian and Belarusian products and a spike in gas prices, was one reason for a stark rise in global food prices in that year. The most dramatic example came from Sri Lanka, whose president had made the baffling decision to ban synthetic fertilizer such as urea and ammonia in 2021. Local agriculture collapsed, as did his government, and he had to flee the country. (Without synthetic fertilizers, some scholars argue, the global population would only be half as large as it is.) In 2022 countries such as Sri Lanka could at least count on foreign aid to help fill gaps. With the U.S. Agency for International Development now shuttered, that safety net may no longer be available.
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Reposted by Nish D
jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 20/03/2026
chat is this bad?
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
This move will actually make China more powerful because new deals will need to be struck for countries previously dependent on Gulf exports as well those dependent on Chinese exports. Not the other way around.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
China has merely used the same avenues and infrastructure developed by the US (during the so-called Cold War) to build their goods-based economy. It's a continuation of colonial state-building which Europe began, US took over, and now China exploits.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Because of how American-centric and Eurocentric our understanding of global politics is, many British folks simply do not understand China's role in the global economy. China has built a model of extraction for "aid". Making the world dependent on aid was a project created by US imperialism.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
What the FT comments section repeatedly fails to understand is that 33% of the world's fertiliser comes through the Hormuz Strait. That will mean that farmers will not be able to grow food in the Global South, people will starve, and food prices will rapidly globally. www.ft.com/content/3033...
ft.com
China cracks down on fuel and fertiliser exports
Beijing is trying to preserve its own stockpiles by limiting sales
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
This is exactly why we need to build our campaigns with IMAGINATION at the heart of it. Because when we know another world is possible, we are motivated to build it. The far right uses fear to make quick wins. But hope can really do the same. We are not powerless, we need something to believe in.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
At the end of it, I was convinced - China is building a future. While most folks focussing on tech injustice tend to focus on America, the real challenge is going to be China. And that's exactly what the narrative that the Spring Gala was spinning. It was showing the world a future.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
As someone who openly speaks out against Generative AI and extractivism, I couldn't help but be deeply moved by the way in which the AI sets were designed, the stunningly choreographed performances and of course - the robots. Well made propaganda makes you feel like you're seeing the future.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Having now watched parts of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, I now totally understand why people in Europe were raptured by colonialism by World Fairs like the 1851 Great Exhibition. It is incredibly emotionally impactful. It's not just awe & dazzle, but the magic of being part of something bigger.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
My latest song obsession is this version of the Mongolian Drinking Song (酒歌) www.youtube.com/watch?v=axjN...
youtube.com
酒歌
YouTube video by Release - Topic
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Are you on Upscrolled? They just added a text feature, combining Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter into a great well-moderated and independent-owned platform. Find me there: share.upscrolled.com/en/user/31b1...
share.upscrolled.com
⁦Nish D⁩ ⁦(@acaciathorns)⁩ / ⁦UpScrolled⁩
Follow ⁦@acaciathorns⁩ on ⁦UpScrolled⁩
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Why are all the books on anti-capitalism coming out of the UK still being framed by the limitations of the nation state? How does that even work in relation to globalisation and international institutions? Anti-capitalist futures need you dismantle the infrastructure that makes capitalism the norm.
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Reposted by Nish D
elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Has anyone done the maths on this claim? Sure seems like a lot of it depends on the so-called "hidden costs" on the NHS, the same NHS that is currently experiencing a labour shortage
“The gross implementation cost will be 10 billion over five years, but the current status quo already burns through over 7 billion per year, excluding many hidden costs such as the burden on the NHS. The net saving during the first years of a reform government will thus be over 7 billion. This expands to 42 billion over the first decade.”
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
We have to stop yearning for a past that never existed and putting into place new social infrastructures which allow us to start building the new world. Otherwise we will be caught in firefighting fascism until we are all completely broken and used up. Hope requires resources. Dreams need belief.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
We fear for our lives with Trump's dictatorship, as if any American leadership was any different. The only reason Trump is able to do what he does is because of American interference in global politics and the US corporate capture of almost every nation state's infrastructure through "development'.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Now when I speak to colleagues and friends, we all seem stuck in the current Capitalist imaginary. In this time of Empire's collapse, we speak of trying to save 'democracy' & 'human rights' - as if those ever actually existed. We are nostalgic for a performance of global peace, not the real thing.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
To dream beyond nation-states seems so farcical today, but it wasn't in post-colonial nations. There was collective Dreaming beyond Capitalism and Communism - into indigenous governances. It wasn't perfect, but people BELIEVED another world was possible - beyond the European imaginary.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Would Pan-Afrikan ideals have created new ways of being and thriving? Would Indigenous socialisms have paved ways for the end of settler-colonialism? Would global languages flourish instead of being killed? Would we have more sustainable and happier ways of living? Would we learn more and love more?
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
What could the world look like if, after decolonisation, newly independent peoples had been able to choose their own paths? What if the "Third World" wasn't the battlegrounds of the Cold War? What if these newly independent nations were allowed to thrive under their own collective sovereignty?
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Clearly just another way of allowing for data sharing and mass surveillance infrastructure, supporting the Digital ID. Also a body to stop protest and political organising across counties. www.ft.com/content/0dee...
ft.com
England and Wales to hand counterterror policing to new national force
Responsibilities including combating organised crime will no longer be handled at a local level
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
When we were young, we ate all the tastiest foods to bring us pleasure. As we age, we avoid the tastiest foods so that we can still experience pleasure. How grateful I am that I have memories of those small tasty pleasures, so much so that I only ever see them through the glaze of nostalgia.
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Fergus Murray @oolong.co.uk · 01/01/2026
Here's the recording of the @lighthousebks.bsky.social Radical Book Fair event on #WeirdPride, unruliness and 'outsider wisdom' with @acaciathorns.bsky.social and @cjdebarra.bsky.social who both had such excellent responses to my questions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTW_...
youtube.com
Divergent: Weird pride, unruliness & outsider wisdom [Radical Book Fair]
YouTube video by Lighthouse Bookshop
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
A New Year's invitation to the political Left and anyone else who is dreaming and building a world that is designed for all of us.
A picture of the moon surrounded by branches. Taken during the day, so the moon is against a blue sky and shining even though it's not night yet.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
Everyone is going to mess up sometime. How do we hold space with each other to allow people to make mistakes and learn from them? How do we hold each other when we make mistakes? How do we listen with our hearts and look beyond words to emotion, trauma and love? How do we better care for each other?
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
Healing comes in many ways. It comes in sharing our food, our spaces, our resources. It comes in community care work. It comes in holding difficult conversations, and finding pathways through them. It comes being able to disagree but still work with each other. It comes in seeing each other as human
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
I've never found those easy tasks. And in a world that is hyper-individualised, it's easy to fall apart than it is to hold each other up. But when someone has disagreed with me with compassion, I have become better. We need to heal each other if we are to survive what is coming.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
As the year closes, I invite to imagine how you might get along with people you disagree with better. How can you work with people who aren't perfect? How can you support learning and plurality? How can you communicate with empathy & compassion? How can you build bridges? How can WE do all of those?
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
The far right can shred us because they stand together, and they are better resourced. They have the media and institutions on their side. We (the left) only have each other, and the only way we can actually build the world we want is through supporting each other & accepting imperfection.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
It's so much easier to pick at and tear apart individual people when they have integrity and believe in something better, and make a small mistake. It's much harder to do so when that person is integrated in community which allows people to learn from mistakes. I wish the Left better understood this
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
I don't have a solution to this. I thought if I lived by those values - of giving and gifting and caring I would be able to show another world was possible. But instead it just resulted in a exploitation and alienation. I had to learn to be selfish, and I know this harms me.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
The problem also, I guess, is that people are told that the problem is them and not the system. So they spend all their time trying to prove themselves within that system. The question is, how do we show people pathways out when they refuse to see beyond that system?
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
There is this idea of challenging norms of "not being pragmatic" but isn't being pragmatic really about getting back to the basics and understanding what we actually need? Isn't being pragmatic about getting rid of what isn't going to help us? Why then must we accept things which make no sense?
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
Why do folks just accept things and not question them? It's like we're trapped by these systems and infrastructures because we simply refuse to see them. We don't have to live this way. We don't need nation states. We don't need AI. We don't need money. We do need food and shelter and care.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
I find the whole defense of Israel's "right to exist" really bizarre because why do any States need to exist at all? And who gave them rights? This all falls back on believing that somehow Laws are Just and not just imaginary inventions without any justification.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 23/12/2025
MERRY CHIPMAS: I have a new @crikey.com.au piece about how a HUGE solar farm planned in north Aus planned to send power via cable to Singapore - but is now PIvoting To Data Centre As hydrogen projects collapse all over the place, the green export dream is dying... www.crikey.com.au/2025/12/23/d...
friendship ended with green energy superpower - now data centre is my best frined
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Many Disabled people, Black people, brown folks, folks with differing live journeys, people without political and financial power face the same challenges. Our bodies are anomalies, and outside of the normal curve. Our stories aren't told and biomedicine fails us.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
In the AuDHD community, you hear a lot about how ADHD meds have a rough impact on people who are also autistic. But there isn't enough research done by those drug companies to investigate why. Because the narratives of difference have been washed away to sell the myth of universal solutions.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
What this means is (even aside from the bias of eugenics and Big Pharma) the model is designed to erase anomalies. Say a drug works for only 12% of people. The drug is then seen as failed for that condition. There isn't a qualitative narrative mapping to understand the 12%.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
One of the greatest flaws of allopathic healing systems is the myth of universality, or at least the reliance on statistical norms which look at what works for "most people" rather than patterns of how bodies work with healing.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Wow. That's the only time I've seen Chris Murray say anything useful. So it must be the most blatant form of union busting ever.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
This isn't so much about showing compassion to those who build the machines which surveil and terrorise us, but about how we ALL need to HEAL from white supremacy. These cycles of harm will only keep perpetuating if we only focus on 'justice' and not on how we got here, and how we go otherwise.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
I think a lot about the Scottish clearances, and how the displaced and the dispossessed became the invaders of what we now call Canada. And how the people who committed the horrors of building residential 'schools' were also those whose entire villages were removed for grazing sheep.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
I would argue that this is actually at the heart of settler colonialism, where the hate & acts of genocide spill over from the trauma of displacement and the need to reshape the stolen 'Other' into something which can be controlled and familiar - and erase all memory of the theft in the first place.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
I know most folks don't look at the horrors of Musk, Altman, and Amodei, and see the loneliness, but I do. So much of the 'heartlessness' and the need for power comes from trauma. Their compelling need to feel important and feel valuable is visibly rooted in deep insecurity.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Capitalism is designed around untethering connection and community interdependence, and replacing it with a product you can buy. As such Gen AI is designed to do the same, but the grief and isolation that builds the machine seems to be at the heart of those directing and shaping its design.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
The most strange thing about AGI is that it seems to be the dream project of people who are profoundly lonely and desperate to invent something that they can connect to. But the process of inventing it results in a product which actually makes people more lonely.
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Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
GenAI used to stir up fear and hate through disinformation faces no social media bans, and instead results in increased engagement. Meanwhile reminding people that a genocide is on-going despite the myth of ceasefire is a sure way to be shadowbanned. Is this really the world you want?
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