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In native gardening, the most effective way to prevent unwanted plants (aka weeds) from growing is to crowd them out with plants you do want. Rather than well-space plants with large gaps of mulch, you packed plants densely together, just like you’d find in nature. Without the space to take root, weeds are (mostly) kept at bay. This is a metaphor about life and social change. I spend a lot of time fighting against social injustice.

Today, I realized that running my own business (successfully for a while) is a big part of what made me hate capitalism so damn much. For nearly a decade, I grew a blog I started while learning to code into a tech education business and dev consultancy. First it was a hobby, then a side hustle, then a full time job. I loved having control of my work and my time.

It’s been a long time since a song has really, truly made me feel all the things. I don’t just mean like, “this song makes me happy” or “this song gets me pumped up” or “this song makes me feel sad.” ...

Almost immediately after finishing the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, I started re-reading the books. I’m blown away by how much the series has pushed me even further into anarchist, community-oriented behavior. We recently moved from MA back to Rhode Island. We were making a lot of trips back and forth between our old house and the storage unit we rented near our new place. After one particularly long day, I pulled off the highway for a quick bite to eat, and saw one of the homeless folks I know panhandling.

In countries outside of the US, “libertarianism” is often synonymous with anarchy. In the US, it typically refers to folks who are really into unrestrained capitalism without the social support. I was talking about this with a libertarian friend some time ago, and they said something along the lines of… What you’re describing means you’d have to really depend on other people. They meant it in a bad way.

So many anarchist principles seems like they would “never work”… because they literally cannot under capitalism, but would work just fine under a different system. One really good example of that is abolishing patents. Patents are silly, actually A patent says a person or company legally owns “an idea” or way of doing things, and no one else can use that idea or approach for many years. If you think about it for a bit, that seems really silly, doesn’t it?

You can’t without supporting Rowling’s transphobic bigotry.

I made another unhoused friend today. Jon is a tattoo artist who suffered a chronic injury his thumb a year ago and can’t do his work anymore as a result. He only recently became homeless. He told me the same thing I’ve heard from so many unhoused folks I’ve talked to over the last year. It’s embarrassing. And I always tell them some version of the same thing.

This weekend, I finished tending my guide on AI that I had planted a seed for in my digital garden. It includes links to various articles on it’s roles in environmental destruction, labor exploitation, economic failure, degrading critical thinking skills, and fascist empowerment. I’ve also included my own personal thoughts, and links to various other thought pieces from other people that I’ve found useful or informative. You can find the guide here.

YouTube video by Lindsay Ellis

I don’t particularly care for Dolly Parton’s music, but I loved Dolly Parton. She was literally the best of us. Unapologetically herself whether people liked it or not. Did not give a single fuck about what was “expected” of her based on her age, gender, career aspirations, and so on. Could have been a billionaire, but chose to invest tremendous amounts of money in communities that were underserved instead. A highly visible counter-argument to the idea that older white cishetero folks can’t help being racist, sexist, and homophobic because of when and where they grew up.

There’s a rather popular flavor of social media content focused on helping unhoused people. The creator will give out sleeping bags, socks, and care kits; sit down and have a meal; or take the unhoused person shopping. Sometimes they help them find work or start a GoFundMe to get them off the streets. It does a lot of good. But it’s also gross AF! Imagine you’re cold, hungry, and desperate, and someone offers to get you all the things you need… if you consent to having a camera shoved in your face and the footage of you at your lowest blasted on the internet.