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  🐙📚 A little excursion into critical theory: Erich Fromm, the Frankfurt School, and the appeal of authoritarianism Ever heard of Erich Fromm? Fromm was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School, a group of thinkers who set out to understand why modern capitalist societies produced not only technological progress and material wealth, but also alienation, conformity, and authoritarian politics. The Frankfurt School brought Marxist social cr...

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  Anarchists can organise. We can make plans, establish responsibilities, coordinate resources, and get things done. We just have this quaint little objection to turning the coordinator into an unquestionable ruler.

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  Capitalism has somehow convinced us that being exhausted, frightened about money, and too busy to enjoy our lives is the natural condition of adulthood. Remarkable propaganda. Terrible product.

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  The British don't speak German like that. Translation isn't just about precision. It's also about audience. A British character in a German translation often doesn't sound British. They sound like a German person's idea of a British person. The same goes for Americans. German audiences have cultural expectations about how British and American people speak. They expect certain rhythms, certain jokes, certain kinds of politeness, a particular flavour of sarcasm. And translat...

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  I am a soft creature with a hard boundary: People are not disposable. Not workers. Not refugees. Not queer kids. Not the poor. Not anyone the system has decided is inconvenient. Nobody is a rounding error. 🐙💜

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  One of the things AI translation is spectacularly bad at is character voice. A character in a novel does not merely say things. They have habits. Favourite turns of phrase. Odd little colloquialisms. A particular rhythm. Maybe they are dry, breathless, pompous, tender, sarcastic, provincial, flamboyant, or gloriously weird. AI tends to turn all of that into statistically plausible soup. A human translator can look at a character and think: No. This is how this person talks. And then recreate...

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  "We would like to help you, but you cannot be a freelancer." So you cannot help me. Okay. "It's for your own safety. After all, you could do something stupid" And... erm... employees could somehow not? Oh well...

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  RE: https://social.notjustbikes.com/@notjustbikes/117309052859417965 It's video creators like this or translators like me, or writers, or musicians, the list is long. But we all suffer from AI and the people that use it. GenAI is theft. GenAI is killing jobs and destroying livelihoods. It needs to be stopped. Also, do watch Not Just Bikes stuff. It's great! :)

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  Finally deleted every last vestige of Windows and Microsoft from all devices in the household. Proprietary software is ultimately somebody else’s control over my machine and my data. I’d rather own the infrastructure I depend on. Google is mostly gone too. One legacy Google Photos instance remains, slowly being emptied. Then that goes as well. The freed-up space is going to local archives and proper, redundant backups. My data. My machines. My storage. My rules. 💾🌱

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  I think it is entirely legitimate to worry about antisemitic trends on parts of the German left. But there is a rather substantial distance between taking antisemitism seriously and comparing a left-wing candidate for Mayor of Berlin to Adolf Hitler, then suggesting that people should invest in companies making crematoria in case she wins. Which, for the record, is literally something I have just seen someone do. I personally think Die Linke has some housekeeping to do. That does not remotely...

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  A little good-night reminder before I disappear into the blankets: No matter how fucked up the world gets, there are always kind people around. People who help without being asked, who listen, who make space, who choose gentleness when they could choose cruelty. They may not always be the loudest people in the room. But they are there. And sometimes, they are the reason we make it through another day. Good night, little weirdos. Be kind to each other. 💜🌙

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  When you confront people with scientific facts and they tell you: "Well, I have a different opinion." Oh well...

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  @enatoni@tech.lgbt I have a feeling they are already upon us.

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  Just saw a person saying: "Why are people always so dismissive and hostile towards Nazis? I say we should give them a chance to govern, we can criticise them then, if they should mess up." This is not the universe I chose to live in...

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  I’m about to start a week I’m really not looking forward to. I’ve tried to get the money from the people who literally owe me money. They said they couldn't. I’ve done everything else I can reasonably do. And I’m still short. Quite a bit short. So, one last try. This is my donation link: [https://ko-fi.com/thepurpleoctopus/goal?g=14] This explains what is happening to translators thanks to AI: [https://ko-fi.com/post/The-Machine-Ate-My-Job-and-Apparently-Im-Suppose-A6V725QY58] It’s not...

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  Good morning :)

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  I increasingly distrust the language of “multiple crises.” AI-driven labour displacement. Climate catastrophe. Right-wing populism. Fascism. Racism. Sexism. The organised backlash against queer existence. We are encouraged to catalogue these as separate problems, each requiring its own specialist vocabulary, institution, funding stream and respectable panel discussion. But they are not unrelated phenomena. They emerge from overlapping structures of domination. The same political economy tha...

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  Good morning. 🌻 My fight to keep my fully human, no-AI translation business alive is still going. I translate. I teach. I work with actual words, actual context, actual people. No algorithmic word soup. No “close enough” machine sludge. No AI slop wearing a little business suit. What would help right now is a little support with my running costs while I keep fighting to make this work. If you’d like to support a tiny human business refusing to let AI eat its lunch, you can do that here: ☕ [...

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  …and behind everything, Vladimir Putin smiles. Nothing quite says “German patriotism” like voting AfD, Putin’s favourite little useful idiots. History really does have a fucked up sense of humour. #AfD #NoAfD #Antifascism #Putin #Germany #NeverAgain

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  Goodnight, everyone. 🌙💜 Not exactly a good day. Fascism is on the rise, my finances are a mess, I can't even pay my rent properly, and generally… ugh. One of those days where the universe really ought to consider getting a hobby. I'm tired. So tonight, I'm going to let myself be tired. Tomorrow is a new day. I'll pull my socks up and get going again. One stubborn step at a time. 🧦💜 Good night, everyone. Sleep well. Be kind to yourselves. We have another day to fight for a bet...

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  Good night, darlings. 🌙💜 The day is finally winding down, the cats have presumably forgiven me for whatever terrible crime I committed today, and I think it’s time to crawl under the blankets and let my brain stop pretending it’s going to solve the entire universe at 0200h. Tomorrow may be difficult. Things may still be messy. The world may continue being an absolute fucking disaster. But tomorrow is also another chance. So rest, breathe, drink some water, hug someone you love if you can, an...

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  I hate it. Whenever a qualified woman gets a prominent job, there’s always a little parade of men crawling out of the gutter to question whether she’s really qualified. And by "little", I mean big. An old white bloke with an office job questioning a master’s degree. A guy with “some college” challenging the academic worth of a doctorate. Seriously? 😂 For some of these lads, the only qualification that seems to matter is apparently being male. What a spectacularly silly way to measu...

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  In those days, before the internet, before endocrinology, before the words transgender and gender identity had entered the languages of homo sapiens (actually, before homo sapiens had language proper), there were those who knew themselves to be other than what the world had named them. And they were many. In the beginning, there were the gender-diverse people of ancient civilizations: priests, warriors, healers, lovers, servants, rulers and rebels. Some were revered. Some were feared. Some wer...

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  At the Pride March in Amsterdam now! 🏳️‍🌈✨ So lovely to be here, surrounded by so many wonderful, beautiful, delightfully queer people. 💜 This is what Pride feels like: community, joy, defiance, and a whole lot of fabulousness. 🥰🏳️‍⚧️ #PrideAmsterdam #Pride #AmsterdamPride #QueerJoy #QueerCommunity #LoveIsLove

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  Amsterdam Pride! 🏳️‍🌈💖 So many beautiful people, so many flags, so much colour and joy. My little queer heart is very, very happy. 🥹✨ #Pride #AmsterdamPride #PrideMarch #QueerJoy #TransPride #LoveIsLove #BeProud

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  I really need to stop reading all the trans-exclusionary stuff. It makes me angry. It makes me depressed. Frankly, my nervous system has filed a formal complaint. Unfortunately, I also feel the need to document it. Screenshots. Dates. Names. Statements. The whole miserable little dossier. Because one day, when the political weather changes, some of these people will suddenly insist they were always on our side. They will say they supported trans people, that they were merely asking questions,...

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  Having a gloriously lazy day here, but a tiny professional PSA from your friendly neighbourhood linguist: If any of you know of any work in translation, editing, proofreading, copywriting, content production, or anything similarly word-shaped, please let me know. 💜 I prefer English and German as target languages, but can accept work in French, Italian, Dutch, and several other European languages (please do inquire!). Yes, I'll do language teaching as well. :) (I am a qualified instru...

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  “Fascism is not a historical accident, but the logical continuation of liberal capitalism at the stage of monopoly.” - Max Horkheimer There is something almost offensively inconvenient about Horkheimer’s sentence. It refuses the comforting story. Fascism is not a monster that crawls out of the forest while respectable society watches helplessly from the window. It does not require civilisation to suddenly disappear. It can emerge from within existing institutions, existing hierarchies, exi...

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  I wrote a poem again. And, well… this one crawled out of a considerably darker corner of the basement. It deals with fascism, genocide, dehumanisation, violence, death, and some other subjects that really ought to come with a warning label and a small cup of tea. Hence the CW for this post... I do like that poem. Quite a lot, actually. Writing it was cathartic. Sometimes the things that fester in your head need to be dragged into the light, given a name, and made to sit quietly on the page i...

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  Good morning! 🌈✨ Pride March in Amsterdam today! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ I’m very much looking forward to all the wonderful, fabulous people, the joy, the colours, and the glorious queer chaos. 💕🥰 My only question is whether my poor little legs have received the memo that they’re expected to survive this. 😅🧦 Wish me luck… and perhaps a strategically placed bench or two. 💜 #Pride #AmsterdamPride #QueerJoy #LGBTQIA #PrideMarch