I had some stickers made, and have some extras free for the asking to anyone in Canada or at cosocial.ca. Just give me a postal address and I'll pop one in the mail.

https://www.miskatonic.org/2025/03/30/ludd/

people are banging on endlessly about the #luddites but i dont see much emphasis on the mass character of their movement

it was a class-based social movement built from below which used direct action to achieve its goals. they struggled for reforms and defended the use of violence

#luddism is less about individual life choices and more about joining and organising in social movements to create a real social force to transform society

if #luddism is so cool then why is joining your local grassroots workplace/tenant union, solidarity network or neighbourhood mutual aid group so uncommon?

engaging (in whatever way you can) in concrete political practice is crucial if we want the legacy of #luddism to mean more than the romantic idea of hitting something with a large hammer

@AkaSci
If "vitamins" & "natural immunity after allowing yourself to become infected" worked, we wouldn't have needed to develop a #vaccine in the first place.

#NaturalImmunity. Brought to you by the same people who told the state of California that if they just "raked the forest", they wouldn't have these massive #wildfires each year. #TooStupidForPolitics #Luddites

The most #tech savvy people I know are all #luddites, not because they distrust tech but because they can see more clearly than others how tech has been captured by oligarchy and corporatism.

Today in Labor History March 11, 1811: Luddites attacked looms near Nottingham, England, because automation was threatening their jobs. At the time, workers were suffering from high unemployment, declining wages, an “endless” war with France and food scarcity. On March 11, they smashed machines in Nottingham and demonstrated for job security and higher wages. The protests and property destruction spread across a 70-mile area of England, reaching Manchester. The government sent troops to protect the factories and made machine-breaking punishable by death.

@AAKL @drsbaitso @Futurism

Anthropic stands on its own two feet.

Google AI IMHO is shit.
I've stopped paying for it a while ago.

I'm caught in a strange place in my attitude to #AI.

I was it's early detractor.
I was literally laughed at in meetings for cautioning about it's risks (2023)

I've written letters and senate submissions against AI only to find out politicians are even more ignorant.

I still think that ultimately AI will be humanities downfall.
Though recent events in the US show that we don't need AI help to do that.

However, now that the tools are out of the box, my philosophy is;
"The only way to stop a bad guy with AI,
Is a good guy with AI".

Naive, perhaps, but otherwise you might just lie down and do nothing.

I don't see the #luddites burning Data centres beyond doomscrolling, so at least I am active in my own tiny way.

when I deleted my #Amazon account a month ago, I "lost" the thousand-plus ebooks I've bought since they were invented . . . I haven't missed a one

Dystopian Society is knocking at the door.

Dont say Ive not been trying to warn you for a long time now. STOP playing along. Ignore that this mentions Blair, bc all politicians, all HE policy (eg the sad JISC), everyone, are behaving like headless cattle about this stuff. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-12/oracle-s-ellison-calls-for-governments-to-unify-data-to-feed-ai

Remember, Ellison is the guy that said “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on”. https://fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-larry-ellison-surveillance-state-police-ai/

Throw away your ring doorbell. Throw away your Alexa, Echo, Siri. Throw any smart tech in the trash right now. Stop using your phone to pay for everything, use a dedicated card. Dont use Google as much as you can. Stop using loyalty cards. Use throwaway email accts.

Im not a conspiracy theorist, Im an ordinary mid level tech person. At least think about this a little bit. There are many highly technically literate ppl who now refer to themselves as Luddites, bc we are against technology that does harm.

Fantastic find in my pile of shame, and very timely! The book wants nothing less than turning Marxists into Luddites and vice versa. Not sure about being a Marxist, but I already like Mueller’s approach of reading into Luddism as a compositional class struggle, an “assemblage of enunciations”.

The "idea of agency, of people, even in the most inauspicious circumstances, possessing the capacity to act on the world.."

#WorkingClass #Luddites #EPThompson

Kenan Malik - Whit EPT tells us aboot the contempt for today’s working class (The Guardian, 04.2.2024)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/04/what-legendary-historian-tells-us-about-contempt-for-todays-working-class-ep-thompson

The "idea of agency, of people, even in the most inauspicious circumstances, possessing the capacity to act on the world.."

Repeat after me.. #WorkingClass #Luddites #EPThompson

Kenan Malik - What a legendary historian tells us about the contempt for today’s working class (The Guardian, 04.2.2024)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/04/what-legendary-historian-tells-us-about-contempt-for-todays-working-class-ep-thompson

New York Times: Now in College, Luddite Teens Still Don’t Want Your Likes. This link goes to a gift article. “Three years after starting a club meant to fight social media’s grip on young people, many original members are holding firm and gaining new converts.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/02/01/new-york-times-now-in-college-luddite-teens-still-dont-want-your-likes/

**Generative AI and the (Re)turn to Luddism**
#ai #GenAI #luddites #luddism

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2025.2452199#d1e604

Hi Fedi, I'm looking for book/paper recommendations about #luddism and #luddites that go in-depth into the historical context. Bonus points if that context includes stuff about textile industry and technologies (esp textile quality, level of skill required to do sth before and after machine invention, tradeoffs btwn efficiency and quality and so forth)