mind reader

Today I have a bit of a wondering rant about the way the world has -become- and how ideology grips us so deeply as to destroy lives, livelihoods, and the fundamental essence of conscious being in modernity. This is born of sadness for my friends who are suffering, anger at the status quo, and deep disappointment in the successive failings of collective power and potential of humanity – so it’s a cheery one, buckle in. We’ve talked about the inextricable relationship between capitalism qua ideology and capitalism qua ontology. Marx gave us sound insights into the historiography of the mode of production, tracing the development of capital in relatively modern Europe. He and Engels gave us multiple meaningful insights into the relationship between humans and productivity, at an economic level, and began to map the territory of ideology shaping human minds to a physical level. This was continued by Gramsci, whose trad...

Healthcare in South Australia is deeply broken. This has lasted through successive governments, and is only getting worse. Commentary from those involved in service delivery, from administrative officers through medical staff, are in a mixed state of frustration and despair, or a dwindling placebo state of euphoric optimism. But there are deep mechanisms driving the divestment from healthcare across the board, and these are supported in a bipartisan fashion by the ALP and LNP both at a state and federal level. A brief detour through the immediate past premiership is required to understand the context of the situation in South Australia, which mirrors, as often the case, a microcosm of the attitude towards health and human services at a national and, frankly, international level. From as early as 2019 there have been obvious and systemic issues in South Australia’s public health system specifically relating to ambulance...

We’re living in a strange world of technological “innovation” on the world wide web. After Web 2.0, the utter garbage fire that is Web 3.0 [1], and successive failed attempts to capitalise on “content creation” we have found ourselves in a race to the bottom with tracking, ads, and “dark patterns” [2]. The latter of these, a dark pattern, is an interface design choice that benefits the company at the expense of the user's experience. Not a surprise, but just another layer in the process of seeking to extract value from internet resources. A fundamental tenet of capitalism is a necessity for the “line to go up” – be this nett profit, stock price, human suffering, it matters not – the reportable metric drives the mode of production in contemporary capital, and the cost to humanity is never more than a brief afterthought. For this one rule to rule them all, “endless profit”, the 99% suffer. This ranges from the minutiae of...

Another day in hell. In the last fortnight we have seen: the ALP eject an elected member over their relatively limp anti-genocide stance [1], the rapid increase in cost of education visas [2], the taxation of higher degrees by research [3], and many policy and party platform transformations to reconfigure the once upon a time centrist party as the firmly right wing player. Where does the fascism start? If we momentarily set aside the deliberately genocidal and narcissistic behaviour of the Australian Government and its ALP rulers, we have just as recently borne witness to the systematic decimation of higher education – in the long run. Education in this country is government controlled. Allegedly public schools and universities are run for the public interest. In reality this has always been the hegemony’s interest. While higher education, in particular, has been seen as a relative bastion of liberal thought, over the pa...

Just what in the fiery circles of hell is happening. The United States’ Supreme Court has effectively ruled (in a grandiose movement) that Republican presidents can do no crime. What a phenomenal world we live in. But what troubles me even more than the deeply upsetting turn this has taken is that working people support this nightmare scenario. There are a litany of articles on “middle America” as a decent, relatively “normal” people who are largely under-educated and service deprived. These are the people who vote republican, or at least the largest voting bloc which empowers people such as Trump [1]. And, yes, they vote against their interests – they vote against the interests of humanity. Explanations for this range from bigotry and misandry through stupidity and a vague sense of retribution. I also want to be clear that the “middle” bloc exists in many countries. This is not a problem unique to the United St...

I can’t evade the growing news of increasing government surveillance of citizens internet usage. In the US, UK, Germany and many others there have been moves towards enabling a ‘man in the middle’ on any encrypted message, website, or other activity online [c.f. 1]. This is also particularly targeted towards citizens, not corporations. The latter are offered more protections as, you guessed it, they are more financially valuable to the legislator’s government. Now in Australia there is a substantial interest in following suit, breaking encryption in the name of “thinking of the children” [2]. Much more technically minded humans than I have written up commentary on why inserting someone between encrypted internet traffic is a terrible idea. But it boils down to “its not encrypted any more”. And to be clear, for any luddites out there, encryption is not what people use to evade the law. It is a necessary part of free, ope...