Lunatech @Lunatech@social.cleverlibre.org

@tzimmer_history The media conglomerates like not paying their fair share of taxes

@tzimmer_history Put some scrutiny on Iowa next. Nine anti-LGBTQ bills this legislative session alone. Removing fresh meat from a lost of goods SNAP participants can purchase. They’re reveling in their cruelty, and it’s all spearheaded by a extremist group called The Family Leader, which seems to control the Iowa GOP.

I know “What would you call it if it were happening elsewhere?” has become something of cliché. But ultimately, I am really just grasping at straws here, trying to convey how extreme and drastic these developments are - and how inadequate the response has been so far.

The New York Times, for instance, had no problem describing Orbán’s crusade against “liberal” education as part of an authoritarian, nationalistic project. They’re definitely treating Florida Orbán differently, approaching him through a deliberately normalizing lens.

My question is directed at those who are nominally in the pro-democracy camp, who claim to be standing against the forces of authoritarianism - specifically, it is directed at the institutions tasked with upholding and defending democratic culture.

Several people have rightfully pointed out that if this were to happen in Germany today, much of the American Right could be expected to cheer such authoritarian initiatives - we only have to look at their enthusiastic embrace of Viktor Orbán as a defender of white Christian patriarchy.

We dove deep into the situation in Florida in today’s “Is This Democracy” episode and dissected the authoritarian takeover of education, the escalating reactionary campaign to stifle, censor, and ban any dissent from the white nationalist woldview. This is a proper emergency. It needs to be treated as such. /end https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/13-the-murder-of-tyre-nichols-the/id1652741954?i=1000597862704

What would you say if the nation’s leading newspaper focused on how the illiberal leader of this hypothetical German state who was banning Jewish voices and was ruthlessly pursuing his authoritarian agenda was, in fact, taking on the “establishment” and successfully building “his brand”? 8/

Is the political and institutional response to what is happening here commensurate with the threat to academic freedom, free speech, and the pillars of democratic culture? Is the mainstream media coverage conveying how radical, how drastic, how dangerous this is? 7/

What would you say? Because while this is not a perfect analogy (analogies never are), it comes really close to capturing what is happening in Florida, and in red states around the country. And I believe that if something like this were happening in Germany, the reaction would be - and certainly should be - different. 6/

And what if I also told you that similar initiatives were being pushed in about half the country where these efforts to suppress, ostracize, and purge were viewed as a blueprint and were already being emulated, as evidenced by hundreds of bills outlawing critical thinking around anti-Semitism and systemic discrimination? 5/

A German state that specifically banned books by the most prominent Jewish intellectuals and scholars by declaring all of them dangerous radicals and “woke” activists who were trying to indoctrinate children, hoping to undermine the nation and subvert German national unity? 4/

A German state that tried to suppress all inquiry into structural, systemic anti-Semitic discrimination in Germany today, and tried to purge all traces of such critical thinking from the libraries, the classrooms, the syllabi, the school curriculum? 3/

A state that was specifically targeting any teaching that emphasized the central role of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust to modern German history and banned the use of scholarship that looked into continuities of anti-Semitism in Germany since the end of World War II? 2/

What would you say if I told you there was a state in Germany (which also has a federal system in which education is largely in the hands of the sixteen states) that was effectively outlawing the teaching of any critical reading of Germany’s history and present? (Thread - 1/)

Mastodon Flock — http://mastodon-flock.vercel.app/

An excellent Twitter-to-Mastodon friend finder.

All the functionality of Movetodon (before Twitter killed it today), but open-source with a delightfully retro interface.

→ Via https://xoxo.zone/@andybaio/109803447626000959

#Mastodon #TwitterAPI
#opensource

How to Use ChatGPT by OpenAI: Beginner's Guide
https://www.debugpoint.com/how-to-use-chatgpt/

#ai #ml #chatgpt #openai #machinelearning

Sarah Posner: We will never fully understand the Jan. 6 insurrection without first reckoning with the role of Republican and religious right activists who believe God is telling them to fight an existential battle for a Christian America.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jan-6-committee-omitted-christian-nationalism-rcna67870

@AmandaMarcotte @hannu_ikonen #republicans are empowering #racists, #misogynists, #murderers, #Fascists, #Christofascists, #Nazis, etc. What are #democrats doing aside from passing bills to make life better for #Americans?

When Harvard Law School says you’re greedy, that’s something else https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4330393