Comradeship // Freechat

Like, giving independence to California and Cascadia for example. Because if you're a communist party and believe the US is a settler state, it's logical to strive to break up that state. But I'm not Statesian so I don't know in what way this is discussed in the parties.

And I sincerely hope that more countries realise this.

Israel can bomb a humanitarian aid vessel in what is effectively EU territory without any consequence. A humanitarian aid vessel. With goods for the people they are starting to death.

And none of the European leaders bats an eye. What's next? Drone striking a pro Palestinian protest?

If we all agree that a people can experience trauma on a large scale and that trauma can then pass onto the descendants, then the reverse must also be true -- a people who have inflicted trauma on a large scale pass that experience onto the descendants.

People who are descended from people from slave-owning and imperialist nations carry with them the scars of slave ownership, genocide, oppression. It shows in the way they act, speak, think. Their worldview is informed by their history as masters of "lesser people".

[$0 of $1000 complete]

For those who didn’t know, I am a 29-year old gamer and college student. I was diagnosed with autism since early age.

I am very dependent on my pension and my aunt on my budget, however most of it went for food. So I have set this fundraising to help me cover college-related fees, free tuition couldn’t cover beyond intended purpose.

PS: My goal will include funds to buy a new phone, my five-year old Realme 6 still survived with broken volume buttons.

Update: Thank you so very much for donating $495! I still raise my goal to $1000. I reset my starting goal to reach $1500 in total.

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/ahriboy/goal

Please if you can spare anything, Thank you!

(For more information,questions, Or for any other ways to send donations/gift cards/etc. if any of the above options don’t work for you, please DM me!!!)

Proxy wars are shaping the 21st century — Ukraine, #Gaza, #Lebanon, Taiwan — all are battlegrounds for larger powers.

Thank you!

So excited. Vijay Prashad will march with us tomorrow, really cool

Still waiting on the outcome of my disability benefit appeal.

I am posting this on mutual aid but due to the volume of requests on there it can sometimes be difficult to get a response.

I am still in need of help accessing food, if anyone is able to help me out with a supermarket gift card I would really appreciate it. They can be bought online and sent to my email address DisabledAceSocialist@hotmail.com

This one takes credit card, debit card and google pay:

https://www.sainsburysgiftcard.co.uk/

This one takes debit, credit card and paypal:

https://www.prezzee.uk/store/sainsburys-uk-gift-card/

This one takes crypto:

https://www.bitrefill.com/gb/en/gift-cards/sainsburys-in-store-digital-uk/

Media is reporting on this all of a sudden and I'm a bit out of the loop. What's happening?

So like...idk I'm not sure how to explain this.

I can enjoy art, and I can appreciate and respect art. But like...I don't know how to enjoy things "abstractly" per se?

What i mean is that I like reading and movies and paintings and such. But I can't enjoy "classics" per se. Nor can I enjoy Avant-garde art. But I can respect both. I want to enjoy both too. I've tried reading both Le Miserables and dream of the red chamber but both times ive put them down fairly quickly (although the dream of the red chamber book I was reading was a fairly old translation, so maybe that was it). Ive also tried reading some poems out of Vladimir Mayakovsky's "the backbone flute" but they havent ellicted and reaction from me. And I really, really respect avant-garde work. I would rather someone like Yoko Ono be successful over Blake Shelton, because Blake Shelton makes the most generic crap, while Yoko Ono actually tries to make things different and interesting.

But I kinda would rather listen to Blake Shelton (obviously if I have broader choice I'm picking someone like Woody Gunthrie or Phil Ochs, but if it was between Shelton and Ono, it'd be a tough choice).

So I guess my main question is how do people enjoy art in the "abstract" way (again, I know that's not a good term but idk what else to call it)? Because I see critics and such wax lyrically about this stuff and they seem to really enjoy it so I wanna enjoy art like that too, beyond "oh it's pretty" or "oh its fun."

Currently watching the new Handmaid's Tale season and on top of only having ONE FUCKING EPISODE PER WEEK the libs over at the subreddit might be even more annoying. Seriously. They are so scared of Gilead but the only thing they type out is 'vooooote and call your senator!!!!'

Like fuck no voting won't help you man fucking organise for once in your life

Hey,

I just thought I'd drop in to say thank you for being here. I'm not participating much or reading everyday, but I've been lurking for quite some time - registered on Lemmygrad around 3+ years ago (?) using different account. It was not the first, but still one of the first spaces (online or not) that encouraged me progress past that pseudo-anarchist vibe-based mindset I had, get some more interest in reading and challenge my worldview as a whole.

I find it a bit funny that that simple "stupid" registration question was probably the first time that I had to sit down with my own thoughts and ask myself "what REALLY is gender"? And now, couple years later and a lot of personal stuff behind me - here I am, transitioning in full force and finally feeling alive. It's rather tough but I don't feel dead inside anymore. I believe it would inevitably happen anyway but it probably made things "click" a bit earlier.

Just finished my workout and getting ready to copy that book about Stalin recommended to me some time ago on my e-reader. Posting online may not truly replace more serious forms of praxis but it does have some effect, especially on people isolated from any meaningful political action happening irl around them (think of people living in small towns or countries where propagating communism is illegal - or just terminally online dorks like the one I was back then). And of course the mutual support that happens here is a great thing too.

So, yeah, it's great you're all here (: Thought I'll share that I'm happy this beautiful little instance exist gathering comrades from around the world.

Love ya Comrades

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4747084

I love the feeling that comes with just like, having some money on your card—being able to afford a coffee, shit like that.

I used to get by fairly well just by posting; I met a lot of people on Twitter who just thought I was cool and would send me money if I ever needed it. Then it all just fell apart somehow.

I’m trying to rebuild that online presence btw; DM me and I’ll send you my Mastodon and/or Bluesky @‘s.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4742235

Democratization of Capitalist Values

Democratization is a word often used with technological advancement and the proliferation of open-source software. Even here, the platform under which this discussion is unfolding, we are participating in a form of "democratization" of the means of "communication". This process of "democratization" is often one framed as a kind of universal or near universal access for the masses to engage in building and protecting their own means of communication. I've talked at length in the past about the nature of the federated, decentralized, communications movement. One of the striking aspects of this movement is how much of the shape and structure this democratization of communication shares with the undemocratic and corporate owned means of communication. Despite being presented with the underlying protocols necessary to create a communication experience that fosters true community, the choice is made instead to take the shape and structure of centralized, corporate owned speech and community platforms and "democratize" them, without considering the social relations engendered by the platforms.

As Marxists, this phenomenon isn't something that should seem strange to us, and we should be able to identify this phenomenon in other instances of "democratization". This phenomenon is what sits at the heart of Marxist analysis, and it is the relationship between the Mode of Production and the Super Structure of society. These "democratized" platforms mirror their centralized sisters, and are imbued with the very same capitalist values, in an environment that stands in conflict with those very same values. If this means of democratization of online community and communication was to be truly democratic, it would be a system that requires the least amount of technical knowledge and resources. However, those operators that sit at the top of each of these hosted systems exist higher on the class divide because they must operate a system designed to work at scale, with a network effect at the heart of its design. This is how you end up with the contradictions that lay under each of these systems. Mastodon.org is the most used instance, and its operators have a vested interest in maintaining that position, as it allows them and their organization to maintain control over the underlying structure of Mastodon. Matrix.org is the most used instance for its system for extremely similar reasons. Bluesky has structured itself in such a way that sits it on the central throne of its implementation. They have all obfuscated the centralization of power by covering their thrown with the cloak of "democratization". Have these systems allowed the fostering of communities that otherwise drown in the sea of capitalist online social organizing? There is no doubt. Do they require significant organizational effort and resources to maintain? Absolutely. Are they still subject to a central, technocratic authority, driven by the same motivations as their sister systems? Yes, they are.

This brings me to AI, and it's current implementation and design, and it's underlying motivations and desires. These systems suffer from the same issues that this very platform suffer from, which is, that they are stained with the values of capital at their heart, and they are in no means a technology that is "neutral" in its design or its implementation. It is foolish to say that "Marxists have never opposed technological progress in principle", in that this statement also handwaves away the critical view of technology in the Marxist tradition. Marx spends more than 150 pages---A tome in its own right---on the subject of technology and technological advancement under Capitalism in Volume 1 of Capital. Wherein he outlines how the worker becomes subjugated to the machine, and I find that this quote from Marx drives home my position, and I think the position of others regarding the use of AI in its current formation (emphasis mine).

The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ the workman.

Capital Volume 1, Production of Relative Surplus Value\Machinery and Modern Industry\Section 4: The Factory

What is it, at the core of both textual and graphical AI generation, that is being democratized? What has the capitalist sought to automate in its pursuit of Large Language Model research and development? It is the democratization of skill. It is the alienation of the Artist from the labor of producing art. As such, it does not matter that this technology has become "democratized" via open-source channels because at the heart of the technology, it's intention and design, it's implementation and commodification, lay the alienation of the artist from the process of creating art. It is not the "democratization" of "creativity". There are scores of artists throughout our history whose art is regarded as creative despite its simplicity in both execution and level of required skill.

One such artist who comes to mind is Jackson Pollock, an artist who is synonymous with paint splattering and a major contributor to the abstract expressionist movement. His aesthetic has been described as a "joke" and void of "political, aesthetic, and moral" value, used as a means of denigrating the practice of producing art. Yet, it is like you describe in your own words, "Creativity is not an inherent quality of tools — it is the product of human intention". One of the obvious things that these generative models exhibit is a clear and distinct lack of intention. I believe that this lack of "human intention" is explicitly what drives people's repulsion from the end product of generative art. It also becomes "a sort of torture" under which the artist becomes employed by the machine. There are endless sources of artists whose roles as creators have been reduced to that of Generative Blemish Control Agents, cleaning up the odd, strange, and unintentioned aspects of the AI process.

Capitalist Mimicry and The Man In The Mirror

One thing often sighted as a mark in favor of AI is the emergence of Deepseek onto the market as a direct competitor to leading US-based AI Models. Its emergence was a massive and disruptive debut, slicing nearly $2-trillion in market cap off the US Tech Sector in a mater of days. This explosive out of the gate performance was not the result of any new ideologically driven reorientation in the nature and goal of generative AI modeling philosophy, but instead of the refinement of the training processes to meet the restrictive conditions created by embargos on western AI processing technology in China.

Deepseek has been hailed as what can be achieved under the "Socialist Model" of production, but I'm more willing to argue that this isn't as true as we wish to believe. China is a vibrant and powerful market economy, one that is governed and controlled by a technocratic party who have a profound understanding of market forces. However, their market economy is not anymore or less susceptible to the whims of capital desires than any other market. One prime example recently was the speculative nature of their housing market, which the state is resolving through a slow deflation of the sector and seizure of assets, among other measures. I think it is safe to argue that much of the demands of the Chinese market economy are forged by the demands of external Capitalist desires. As the worlds forge, the heart of production in the global economy, their market must meet the demands of external capitalist forces. It should be remembered here, that the market economy of China operates within a cage, with no political influence on the state, but that does not make it immune to the demands and desires of Capitalists at the helm of states abroad.

Yes. Deepseek is a tool set released in an open-source way. Yes, Deepseek is a tool set that one can use at a much cheaper rate than competitors in the market, or roll your own hosting infrastructure for. However, what is the tool set exactly, what are its goals, who does it benefit, and who does it work against? The incredible innovation under the "Socialist model" still performs the same desired processes of alienation that capitalists in the west are searching for, just at a far cheaper cost. This demand is one of geopolitical economy, where using free trade principles, Deepseek intends to drive demand away from US-based solutions and into its coffers in China. The competition created by Deepseek has ignited several protectionist practices by the US to save its most important driver of growth in its economy, the tech sector. The new-found efficiency of Deepseek threatens not just the AI sector inside of tech, but the growing connective tissue sprung up around the sector. With the bloated and wasteful implementation of Open AI's models, it gave rise to growing demand for power generation, data centers, and cooling solutions, all of which lost large when Deepseek arrived. So at its heart, it has not changed what AI does for people, only how expensive AI is for capitalists in year-to-year operations. What good is this open-source tool if what is being open sourced are the same demands and desires of the capitalist class?

Reflected in the production of Deepseek is the American Capitalist, they stand as the man in the mirror, and the market economy of China as doing what a market economy does: Compete for territory in hopes of driving out competition, to become a monopoly agent within the space. This monopolization process can still be something in which you distribute through an open-source means. Just as in my example above, of the social media platforms democratizing the social relations of capitalist communal spaces, so too is Deepseek democratizing the alienation of artists and writers from their labor.

They are not democratizing the process of Artists and Laborers training their own models to perform specific and desired repetitive tasks as part of their own labor process in any form. They hold all the keys because even though they were able to slice the head from the generative snake that is the US AI Market, it still cost them several million dollars to do so, and their clear goal is to replace that snake.

A Renaissance Man Made of Metal

Much in the same way that the peasants of the past lost access to the commons and were forced into the factories under this new, capitalist organization of the economy, the artist has been undergoing a similar process. However, instead of toiling away on their plots of land in common, giving up a tenth of their yield each year to their lord, and providing a sum of their hourly labor to work the fields at the manor, the Artist historically worked at the behest of a Patron. The high watermark for this organization of labor was the Renaissance period. Here, names we all know and recognize, such as da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Botticelli were paid by their Patron Lords or at times the popes of Rome to hone their craft and in exchange paint great works for their benefactors.

As time passed, and the world industrialized, the system of Patronage faded and gave way to the Art Market, where artists could sell their creative output directly to galleries and individuals. With the rise of visual entertainment, and our modern entertainment industry, most artists' primary income stems from the wage labor they provide to the corporation to which they are employed. They require significant training, years and decades of practice and development. The reproduction of their labor has always been a hard nut to crack, until very recently. Some advancements in mediums shifted the demand for different disciplines, 2D animators found themselves washed on the shores of the 3D landscape, wages and benefits depleted, back on the bottom rung learning a new craft after decades of momentum via unionization in the 2D space. The transition from 2D to 3D in animation is a good case study in the process of proletarianization, very akin to the drive to teach students to code decades later in a push for the STEM sector. Now, both of these sectors of laborers are under threat from the Metal Renaissance Man, who operates under the patronage of his corporate rulers, producing works at their whim, and at the whim of others, for a profit. This Mechanical Michelangelo has the potential to become the primary source of artistic and---in the case of code---logical expression, and the artists and coders who trained him become his subordinates. Cleaning up the mistakes, and hiding the rogue sixth finger and toe as needed.

Long gone are the days of Patronage, and soon too long gone will be the days of laboring for a wage to produce art. We have to, as revolutionary Marxists, recognize that this contradiction is one that presents to artists, as laborers, the end of their practice, not the beginning or enhancement of that practice. It is this mimicry that the current technological solutions participate in that strikes at the heart of the artists' issue. Hired for their talent, then, used to train the machine with which they will be replaced, or reduced. Thus limiting the economic viability of the craft for a large portion of the artistic population. The only other avenue for sustainability is the Art Market, which has long been a trade backed by the laundering of dark money and the sound of a roulette wheel. A place where "meritocracy" rules with an iron fist. It is not enough for us to look at the mechanical productive force that generative AI represents, and brush it aside as simply the wheels of progress turning. To do so is to alienate a large section of the working class, a class whose industry constitutes the same percentage of GDP as sectors like Agriculture.

I have no issue with the underlying algorithm, the attention-based training, that sits at the center of this technology. It has done some incredible things for science, where a focused and specialized use of the technology is applied. Under an organization of the economy, void of capitalist desires and the aims to alienate workers from their labor, these algorithms could be utilized in many ways. Undoubtably, organizations of ones like the USSR's Artist Unions would be central in the planning and development of such technological advancement of generative AI technology under Socialism. However, every attempt to restrict and manage the use of generative AI today, is simply an effort to prolong the full proletarianization process of the arts. Embracing it now only signals your alliance to that process.

In Brazil there'll be massive marches for the reduction of the workweek. I think this year it'll the biggest First of May since the turn of the century.

How's it gonna go in your countries?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4713461

Transparency hour: the PayPal account belongs to my “roommate,” who also posts here; I can’t access my own PayPal account.

I miss being able to sort of pretend like I’m just another person, who just happens to be homeless. But I haven’t shaven in two weeks and my plans of getting back on HRT (specifically the estrogen shot) have dried and desiccated in the sunshine and I just feel like shit. I’ve felt like shit all day. I didn’t sleep last night because I felt like shit.

Thanks.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4704483

The epub file I have for A People's History is awful on my Kobo, no real margins anywhere, just a mess. The epub I have of Inventing Reality is full of awful OCR errors because its the Archive.org edition (they do zero editing of the OCR output from what I can tell.)

Are there better copies of these books somewhere?

AI has become as a deeply polarizing issue on the left, with many people having concerns regarding its reliance on unauthorized training data, displacement of workers, lack of creativity, and environmental costs. I'm going to argue that while these critiques warrant attention, they overlook the broader systemic context. As Marxists, our focus should not be on rejecting technological advancement but on challenging the capitalist framework that shapes its use. By reframing the debate, we can recognize AI’s potential as a tool for democratizing creativity and accelerating the contradictions inherent in capitalism.

Marxists have never opposed technological progress in principle. From the Industrial Revolution to the digital age, we have understood that technological shifts necessarily proletarianize labor by reshaping modes of production. AI is no exception. What distinguishes it is its capacity to automate aspects of cognitive and creative tasks such as writing, coding, and illustration that were once considered uniquely human. This disruption is neither unprecedented nor inherently negative. Automation under capitalism displaces workers, yes, but our critique must target the system that weaponizes progress against the workers as opposed to the tools themselves. Resisting AI on these grounds mistakes symptoms such as job loss for the root problem of capitalist exploitation.

Democratization Versus Corporate Capture

The ethical objection to AI training on copyrighted material holds superficial validity, but only within capitalism’s warped logic. Intellectual property laws exist to concentrate ownership and profit in the hands of corporations, not to protect individual artists. Disney’s ruthless copyright enforcement, for instance, sharply contrasts with its own history of mining public-domain stories. Meanwhile, OpenAI scraping data at scale, it exposes the hypocrisy of a system that privileges corporate IP hoarding over collective cultural wealth. Large corporations can ignore copyright without being held to account while regular people cannot. In practice, copyright helps capitalists far more than it help individual artists. Attacking AI for “theft” inadvertently legitimizes the very IP regimes that alienate artists from their work. Should a proletarian writer begrudge the use of their words to build a tool that, in better hands, could empower millions? The true conflict lies not in AI’s training methods but in who controls its outputs.

Open-source AI models, when decoupled from profit motives, democratize creativity in unprecedented ways. They enable a nurse to visualize a protest poster, a factory worker to draft a union newsletter, or a tenant to simulate rent-strike scenarios. This is no different from fanfiction writers reimagining Star Wars or street artists riffing on Warhol. It's just collective culture remixing itself, as it always has. The threat arises when corporations monopolize these tools to replace paid labor with automated profit engines. But the paradox here is that boycotting AI in grassroots spaces does nothing to hinder corporate adoption. It only surrenders a potent tool to the enemy. Why deny ourselves the capacity to create, organize, and imagine more freely, while Amazon and Meta invest billions to weaponize that same capacity against us?

Opposing AI for its misuse under capitalism is both futile and counterproductive. Creativity critiques confuse corporate mass-production with the experimental joy of an individual sketching ideas via tools like Stable Diffusion. Our task is not to police personal use but to fight for collective ownership. We should demand public AI infrastructure to ensure that this technology is not hoarded by a handful of corporations. Surrendering it to capital ensures defeat while reclaiming it might just expand our arsenal for the fights ahead.

Creativity as Human Intent, Not Tool Output

The claim that AI “lacks creativity” misunderstands both technology and the nature of art itself. Creativity is not an inherent quality of tools — it is the product of human intention. A camera cannot compose a photograph; it is the photographer who chooses the angle, the light, the moment. Similarly, generative AI does not conjure ideas from the void. It is an instrument wielded by humans to translate their vision into reality. Debating whether AI is “creative” is as meaningless as debating whether a paintbrush dreams of landscapes. The tool is inert; the artist is alive.

AI has no more volition than a camera. When I photograph a bird in a park, the artistry does not lie in the shutter button I press or the aperture I adjust, but in the years I’ve spent honing my eye to recognize the interplay of light and shadow, anticipating the tilt of a wing, sensing the split-second harmony of motion and stillness. These are the skills that allow me to capture images such as this:

Hand my camera to a novice, and it is unlikely they would produce anything interesting with it. Generative AI operates the same way. Anyone can type “epic space battle” into a prompt, but without an understanding of color theory, narrative tension, or cultural symbolism, the result is generic noise. This is what we refer to as AI slop. The true labor resides in the human ability to curate and refine, to transform raw output into something resonant.

AI tools like ComfyUI are already being used by artists to collaborate and bring their visions to life, particularly for smaller studios. These tools streamline the workflow, allowing for a faster transition from the initial sketch to a polished final product. They also facilitate an iterative and dynamic creative process, encouraging experimentation and leading to unexpected, innovative results. Far from replacing artists, AI expands their creative potential, enabling smaller teams to tackle more ambitious projects.

People who attack gen AI on the grounds of it being “soulless” are recycling a tired pattern of gatekeeping. In the 1950s, programmers derided high-level languages like FORTRAN as “cheating,” insisting real coders wrote in assembly. They conflated suffering with sanctity, as if the drudgery of manual memory allocation were the essence of creativity. Today’s artists, threatened by AI, make the same error. Mastery of Photoshop brushes or oil paints is not what defines art, it's a technical skill developed for a particular medium. What really matters is the capacity to communicate ideas and emotions through a medium. Tools evolve, and human expression adapts in response. When photography first emerged, painters declared mechanical reproduction the death of art. Instead, it birthed new forms such as surrealism, abstraction, cinema that expanded what art could be.

The real distinction between a camera and generative AI is one of scope, not substance. A camera captures the world as it exists while AI visualizes worlds that could be. Yet both require a human to decide what matters. When I shot my bird photograph, the camera did not choose the park, the species, or the composition. Likewise, AI doesn’t decide whether a cyberpunk cityscape should feel dystopian or whimsical. That intent, the infusion of meaning, is irreplaceably human. Automation doesn’t erase creativity, all it does is redistribute labor. Just as calculators freed mathematicians from drudgery of arithmetic, AI lowers technical barriers for artists, shifting the focus to concept and critique.

The real anxiety over AI art is about the balance of power. When institutions equate skill with specific tools such as oil paint, Python, DSLR cameras, they privilege those with the time and resources to master them. Generative AI, for all its flaws, democratizes access. A factory worker can now illustrate their memoir and a teenager in Lagos can prototype a comic. Does this mean every output is “art”? No more than every Instagram snapshot is a Cartier-Bresson. But gatekeepers have always weaponized “authenticity” to exclude newcomers. The camera did not kill art. Assembly lines did not kill craftsmanship. And AI will not kill creativity. What it exposes is that much of what we associate with production of art is rooted in specific technical skills.

Finally, the “efficiency” objection to AI collapses under its own short-termism. Consider that just a couple of years ago, running a state-of-the-art model required data center full of GPUs burning through kilowatts of power. Today, DeepSeek model runs on a consumer grade desktop using mere 200 watts of power. This trajectory is predictable. Hardware optimizations, quantization, and open-source breakthroughs have slashed computational demands exponentially.

Critics cherry-pick peak resource use during AI’s infancy. Meanwhile, AI’s energy footprint per output unit plummets year-over-year. Training GPT-3 in 2020 consumed ~1,300 MWh; by 2023, similar models achieved comparable performance with 90% less power. This progress is the natural arc of technological maturation. There is every reason to expect that these trends will continue into the future.

Open Source or Oligarchy

To oppose AI as a technology is to miss the forest for the trees. The most important question is who will control these tools going forward. No amount of ethical hand-wringing will halt development of this technology. Corporations will chase AI for the same reason 19th-century factory owners relentlessly chased steam engines. Automation allows companies to cut costs, break labor leverage, and centralize power. Left to corporations, AI will become another privatized weapon to crush worker autonomy. However, if it is developed in the open then it has the potential to be a democratized tool to expand collective creativity.

We’ve seen this story before. The internet began with promises of decentralization, only to be co-opted by monopolies like Google and Meta, who transformed open protocols into walled gardens of surveillance. AI now stands at the same crossroads. If those with ethical concerns about AI abandon the technology, its development will inevitably be left solely to those without such scruples. The result will be proprietary models locked behind corporate APIs that are censored to appease shareholders, priced beyond public reach, and designed solely for profit. It's a future where Disney holds exclusive rights to generate "fairytale" imagery, and Amazon patents "dynamic storytelling" tools for its Prime franchises. This is the necessary outcome when technology remains under corporate control. Under capitalism, innovation always serves monopoly power as opposed to the interests of the public.

On the other hand, open-source AI offers a different path forward. Stable Diffusion’s leak in 2022 proved this: within months, artists, researchers, and collectives weaponized it for everything from union propaganda to indigenous language preservation. The technology itself is neutral, but its application becomes a tool of class warfare. To fight should be for public AI infrastructure, transparent models, community-driven training data, and worker-controlled governance. It's a fight for the means of cultural production. Not because we naively believe in “neutral tech,” but because we know the alternative is feudalistic control.

The backlash against AI art often fixates on nostalgia for pre-digital craftsmanship. But romanticizing the struggle of “the starving artist” only plays into capitalist myths. Under feudalism, scribes lamented the printing press; under industrialization, weavers smashed looms. Today’s artists face the same crossroads: adapt or be crushed. Adaptation doesn’t mean surrender, it means figuring out ways to organize effectively. One example of this model in action was when Hollywood writers used collective bargaining to demand AI guardrails in their 2023 contracts.

Artists hold leverage that they can wield if they organize strategically along material lines. What if illustrators unionized to mandate human oversight in AI-assisted comics? What if musicians demanded royalties each time their style trains a model? It’s the same solidarity that forced studios to credit VFX artists after decades of erasure.

Moralizing about AI’s “soullessness” is a dead end. Capitalists don’t care about souls, they care about surplus value. Every worker co-op training its own model, every indie game studio bypassing proprietary tools, every worker using open AI tools to have their voice heard chips away at corporate control. It’s materialist task of redistributing power. Marx didn’t weep for the cottage industries steam engines destroyed. He advocated for socialization of the means of production. The goal of stopping AI is not a realistic one, but we can ensure its dividends flow to the many, not the few.

The oligarchs aren’t debating AI ethics, they’re investing billions to own and control this technology. Our choice is to cower in nostalgia or fight to have a stake in our future. Every open-source model trained, every worker collective formed, every contract renegotiated is a step forward. AI won’t be stopped any more than the printing press and the internet before it. The machines aren’t the enemy. The owners are.

I was supposed to post on my birthday but I was very busy and exhausted yesterday.

Today, my first $500 ko-fi funds are complete.

I was deciding to finalize my purchase of my next phone.

What's a way to get SSDI (I think that's the acronym)?

I thought I had it. I put in 10 disabilities which I had and I wasn't lying about any of them. I would honestly never commit fraud, despite my circumstances, and never intend to.

But they said that I "didn't work enough hours."

I'm not sure how to make it go to my credit (Social Security credits, that is).

How many jobs or hours should you work?

I can also give you all the full message through a DM, perhaps.

I've worked, I think, eight jobs in total in the last decade with one year that I wasn't working (during the pandemic). Frankly, I could use the money; I'm trying to get into nursing school, though am getting my CNA first. And I need a car now. I have a Bachelor's degree in Communications, but want to change my career path for the time being.

To be fair, I didn't put all my work experience and there's more that I could put.

Is there a way to keep track of all the credits you have? Or "input" them or however you're supposed to do factor them into the system?

Also, assuming you get disability assistance from Social Security Administration, what's a good way to phrase or say certain things in the application process?

Do help out if you can. Thanks!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4679061

Breakfast, some new bedding, and a toothbrush

Because I’m confined to the back seat of the Scion for at least 90 days (license suspended, curiously even though I don’t have a valid license to begin with), with my roommates taking turns chauffeuring me, I have an actual bed now. I can lay across the seats and it’s cozy. Or would be if I had pillows and a proper blanket. I’d acclimated to a life where I legit considered it comfortable sitting up in my driver’s seat, with just like a sleeping bag as a blanket.

And I guess replacing the sleeping bag is a symbolic kind of thing. I’m really only technically homeless, it feels like.

I also need to brush my teeth, and eat breakfast—and maybe, as a treat, hit up Goodwill? I still don’t have the courage to shoplift.

CashApp/Venmo: allthetimesivedied

Some people interpret their dreams as an exercise in self-discovery. Some let their dreams inspire them in the waking world. Others regard them more simply as a novelty of the human mind. Still more do a fourth or even a fifth thing I can’t think of (my list felt incomplete). Whatever your experience or opinions of dreams are, I think dreams are neat. We go to sleep and our brains hallucinate for a while and sometimes we remember it. I think we often forget how incredible that is. 

If you’d be willing to share, I’d like to know about your recurring dreams.

Trying to notice schemas within my own mind and even relationships, to a point.

I'm also thinking of doing Internal Family Systems with my new therapist.

So far, we've done CBT techniques and the like.

What do you recommend in terms of healing from trauma?

I'm on Zoloft (which is replacing Lexapro and is directly responsible for dealing with trauma or PTSD or C-PTSD) and it's done away with my traumatic flashbacks (which were daily).

Hope you all are doing well, comrades!

I just wanted to say, thank you so much to the people here who made it possible. Without your help it wouldn't be over and done with now. Life has been hard and miserable for a while now but at least this is one problem crossed off the list.