DecaturNature @DecaturNature@social.cleverlibre.org

Here’s a challenging question — What’s a REALLY SMART PUBLIC POLICY DECISION OR PROGRAM you’ve seen a city make, that actually resulted in a more livable, equitable, healthy and/or sustainable city for people? Share enough details for everyone to understand your choice. Repost if you can, to spread the question to more folks. Thanks!

I was unaware of the Stone Mountain Confederate monument until I moved to Georgia. The Atlanta History Center is telling it's story now. It's a massive carving of Davis, Lee, and Jackson on the side of Stone Mountain, which is the centerpiece of a very popular state park. It was only completed in 1972 and is surrounded by a theme park celebrating the antebellum South.
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/monument/
#history #Atlanta #Georgia #racism #monuments

Call yourself something other than a university if your response to a student screening of a film criticizing the president is to *cut the power*
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indian-university-warns-against-screening-bbc-documentary-modi-2023-01-24/

Hamline U update: faculty votes overwhelmingly no confidence in president who presided over free speech debacle. FAAFO.

https://hamlineoracle.com/10822/news/hamline-faculty-no-longer-have-faith-in-president-miller/

The birdsite's former management resisted censorship by foreign dictators, but under Musk India's right-wing regime gets yessir-yessir cooperation: https://theintercept.com/2023/01/24/twitter-elon-musk-modi-india-bbc/

"There’s no appeal to patriotism or idealism. They do not present the war as a heroic struggle against Nato Nazis...they sell the army merely as “an exit from the misery of the Russian provinces.”
Nick Cohen on Russia's recruitment campaign

https://nickcohen.substack.com/p/escape-your-worthless-life-join-putins

I want to read all of the books but don't have the time. I think the New Books in Critical Theory podcast is going to help me feel a little better about that.

I just listened to this episode with Sophie Lewis about her recent work "Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation" and got a solid overview of the topic.

They have over 1100 episodes available featuring many great thinkers of critical theory.

#podcast #books #CriticalTheory #abolition

https://podbay.fm/p/new-books-in-critical-theory/e/1668762000

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Tiktok's enshittification; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

#Pluralistic

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Update on ua-fediland.de :

One of their moderators got back to my email. They're in Ukraine and can't moderate during the blackouts (understandably!), and the bots/spammers take advantage of the power outages (they're Russian) to sign up when they know they'll have maximum time to stay on the instance before getting moderated.

I've suggested they might want to close sign ups before the outages to try to prevent it.

We're moving them from suspended to silenced and will keep an eye.

It has been repeated many times, but the idea that cis het men would go to any bother whatsoever pretending to be trans women in order to sexually assault someone when they do so all the time already and are rarely and barely punished for it is patently absurd, and yet we are constantly forced to address this nonexistent, made-up problem by people who just want trans people to disappear and die.