@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
Interesting this rush to force everyone online. My family and I have, for the past year, been actively unsubscribing from paying any bills online. We insist on hard mail. We refuse to engage with any major service or agency over the phone, other to confirm an appointment. All correspondence has to be in writing. No online banking, No filling of tax online. Colour us #luddites
RESIST
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.
Now in College, #LudditeTeens Still Don’t Want Your Likes
Three years after starting a club meant to fight #SocialMedia’s grip on young people, many original members are holding firm and gaining new converts.
By Alex Vadukul
Jan. 30, 2025
"Biruk Watling, a college sophomore wearing a baggy coat and purple fingerless gloves, walked the chilly campus of Temple University in #Philadelphia on a recent afternoon to recruit new members to her club.
She taped a flier to a pole: '#JoinTheLudditeClub For #MeaningfulConnections.' Down the block, she posted another one: 'Do You Desire a Healthier Relationship With Technology, Especially Social Media? The Luddite Club Welcomes You and Your Ideas.'
"When a student approached, Ms. Watling dove into her pitch.
"'Our club promotes #ConsciousConsumption of #technology,' she said. 'We’re for #HumanConnection. I’m one of the first members of the original Luddite Club in #Brooklyn. Now I’m trying to start it in #Philly.
"She pulled out a #FlipPhone, mystifying her recruit.
"'We use these,' she said. 'This has been the most freeing experience of my life.'
If Ms. Watling had a missionary’s zeal, it was because she wasn’t just promoting a student club, but an approach to modern life that profoundly changed her two years ago, when she helped form the Luddite Club as a high school student in New York.
"But that was then, back when things were simpler, before she had embarked on the more independent life of a college student and found herself having to navigate QR codes, two-factor-identification logins, dating apps and other digital staples of campus life.
"The #LudditeClub was the subject of an article I wrote in 2022 — a story that, ironically, went viral. It told of how a group of teenage tech skeptics from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn and a few other schools in the city gathered on weekends in Prospect Park to enjoy some time together away from the machine.
"They #sketched and #painted side by side. They read quietly, favoring works by #Dostoyevsky, #Kerouac and #Vonnegut. They sat on logs and groused about how #TikTok was dumbing down their generation. Their flip phones were decorated with stickers and nail polish.
"Readers inspired by their message responded in hundreds of emails and comments. Reporters from Germany, Brazil, Japan and elsewhere flooded my inbox, asking me how to reach these students who were so hard to track down online. Snarky Reddit threads and think pieces sprouted. #RalphNader endorsed the club in an opinion essay, writing: 'This is a rebellion that needs support and diffusion.'"
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.html
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/
#SolarPunkSunday #Nature #NeoLuddite #Luddites #LessScreenTime #MoreBoardGames #MoreGreenTime #MoreOutdoorTime #FlipPhones #MoreBooks #ResistTheMachine
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”.
was previously unaware of this 1988 thames telly docudrama about the west riding luddites. worth it for the goth face paint, to be honest.
#luddites #luddism #film #documentary #history
https://youtu.be/RWIyRqn0Gj0
always remember: it's not because capitalism was winning that the system had to smash the luddites. it's precisely the opposite. time to return the 'favour'.
#luddites #luddism #smashTheLooms
AI workers are almost certainly not yet good enough to replace human workers, so this advertisement for an AI company called “Artisan” is all bluster. They are clearly trying to make a quick buck off of this latest LLM-driven AI investment bubble.
But what is more concerning is the how boldly this “Artisan” AI company declares their intention to help extremely wealthy companies increase profits by eliminating human jobs. The history of the industrial revolution, the sweatshops, the extreme misery of factory workers, the Luddites, the Communists, the Great Depression… all of that history is repeating itself. Will the political leaders of the governments of the world be smart enough to learn from history and respond to this situation, perhaps with some universal basic income plan, and/or regulation of the AI industry?
Or will they continue to let these very large companies essentially rob ordinary people of their livelihood until violence erupts against them on a massive scale? Perhaps our political leaders believe they can keep the peace using invincible police robots, and that somehow this will not lead to the situation depicted in the fictional story of “The Terminator.” And have they considered what might happen when terrorists learn how to hack these killer robots for their own personal use?
If our political leaders aren’t going to learn from history, the recent murder of a US health insurance company CEO is just a drop in the tsunami of violence that is yet to come.
![An image of (what appears to be) a homeless person next to an advertisement by a company called "Artisan." The ad is about how you can replace employees with AI, it reads "Artisans [AI workers] won't complain about work-life balance. The era of AI employees is here."](https://fe.upload.disroot.org/media/70cbdfdf6cf34849fd5412816d270728f0a3822ae2d99af2bfd2ec548c076a9d.png "An image of (what appears to be) a homeless person next to an advertisement by a company called \"Artisan.\" The ad is about how you can replace employees with AI, it reads \"Artisans [AI workers] won't complain about work-life balance. The era of AI employees is here.\"")
what if the sharks been talking to the orcas and decided to join their #Luddites party and go for what the humans can’t live without these days? 
has anybody seen a shark wearing a hand still holding an iPhone as a hat? 
a very much needed secular Sunday sermon, with a shout out to our political ancestors the #Luddites, brought to you by Andrew @ajroach42
https://retro.social/@ajroach42/113578206804231287
fuckit, don’t know if the tag exists so let me tag it and make it the first of many to come.
your regular reminder to smash the looms.
#luddites #bigTech #freePalestine #fuckAI #blackrockUK #blackrock
your regular reminder to smash the looms.
#luddites #bigTech #freePalestine #fuckAI
#AoIR2024 So the #Luddites were actually glorious activists, early trade unionists, who were maligned by the Lords who were in charge of Britain at the time. Don’t buy the classist stories that have been told to you. They got a lot done and didn’t actually hate technology. They fought to regulate technology and support labour rights. Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine is a great history of the Luddites, and his newsletter about AI and labour is good too. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=little-brown
A push for new automation may be redirected to the workers’ well-being. Funneling must be done by workers actively involved. Here is a win: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/yes-the-striking-dockworkers-were
Calling all #luddites: you know those annoying captchas that ask you to select a fire hydrant or traffic lights or something in a picture? Those are being used to train AIs and self-driving cars and what not. The first picture is the actual captcha where the answer is known, the second picture you can put in anything you want as the fire hydrant and it will accept it, it's the one used for training. Be a real shame if everyone started picking random things and fucking up Googles training data.
@w7voa
So #BrainWormBearDumper & #DementiaDon are going to outlaw "condensation" created by warm jet engines in the cold air? #GOP #Luddites
