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Cake day: January 26th, 2024

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  • Well, anarchism in general isn’t a “Get rid of state” nuclear button type of thing just as all communism isn’t a magic “skip the socialism part” ideology. (I’m skipping this part a bit, but if you need/want this explained, feel free to ask!)

    There are more and less “extreme” versions of both. And the core idea is to abolish state authority, although the way they go around it is very different, but I feel the percieved reasons (by anarchists in particular) as to why it should be done are the most misunderstood thing about anarchism in general.

    One of the core tenants of anarchism is its definition of a state: A monopoly on violence, full stop. And I have to add, this definition is academically accepted, as in, all academic definitions of a state agree on the “monopoly of violence” part, but also add other things into the focus of what “a state” embodies, while anarchists don’t.

    The reason for this is that a state inherently takes away power away from the people, no matter how “good” the state itself is. If anything, the bureacuratic process oftentimes harms its citizens and makes misinformed decisions based on procedure rather than the facts and merits of each case (which is a general fact of life anarchism isn’t immune to, but it hopes to avoid).

    Another reason is that to save costs, decisions aren’t made by all people in referendums on a local or national scale, but by nationwide election to decide “representatives” who wote in the general electorate’s stead. Or because it concentrates power and money in the hands of the few. But it probably goes both ways.

    Anarchism doesn’t believe in “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” as much as it believes people should make all the important decisions. It is also aware of the fact that some compromises have to be made in reality.

    This is why a bunch of streams in anarchism aren’t so focused on achieving direct democracy (a general referendum for every little thing imaginable), but rather want to upend the direction of power: all power must be bottom-up, as opposed to top-down: people join into neighborhood councils, which join into larger units of various sizes and names. Self-sufficiency is valued and respected, but isn’t a requisite. People aren’t islands, but being less dependant on others is seen as a good idea.

    And it’s not just limited to democracy. People are expected to be members of multiple “home units”, for example a geographic one, a work-related one and one for a social issues they have strong feelings about. In other words, “Anarchism applied” translates strongly into workplace syndicalism and membership in charitous organizactions, i.e. looking out for your own interests as well as helping other members of the community.

    These smaller units make smaller decisions. As they form larger ones, they jointly decide their leadership, but the focus is always on the top being more dependant on the bottom than vice versa, all the way up to the national assembly (or even beyond).

    The most important idea here is the “social contract”. Individuals “sign off” a part of their “rights” (i.e. give decisionmaking power) to the larger units, in hopes of achieving a stronger, more general impact.

    This is the core idea about globak decisionmaking. With power comes responsiblity. The more units join in on this issue, the more accoubtability the newly-formed body has. These are kind of like government-run agencies and departments work today, but are formed by groups “joining in”, as opposed to an assembly “going down” and saying “This town needs a hospital, thus one doesn’t”. Or “The maximum number of hotels in a city is one every 15 blocks” (What is a block? What is a hotel? Why everywhere, etc?).

    It’s not quite different from how contemporary democracy works in theory. Merely the accountability in practice is flipped right around. The rest can stay mostly the same.

    In contemporary democtacy, there are only a few elections for a few rigid bodies. In anarchism there’d be more bodies which would make up those bodies. Those bodies would retain some of their power*, but the lesser bodies could (and would) exercise some of that power as well.

    Decisionmaking bodies are still made up of experts, but not spawned from above, but rather synthesized from bellow.

    Power corrupts, so all power must be spread as democratically as possible. Holders of concentrared power must be personally and fully accountable to those under them whom they represent (and not, say, view those underneath them as pawns on their personal chess-board).






  • DRM creates artificial scarcity

    But does it?

    That being said, the cause of the profit-boostig effect is the walled garden effect, not artificial scarcity.

    Whether amazon sells DRM-free ebooks on their Kindles or not isn’t the point. The point is the ease of use.

    Most people will just stick with Amazon - even if they can migrate “legally”. People don’t like change. Of course, some always will.

    If it gets expensive, the share of those jump-shippers increases - would you rather pay 25% less for your books if you switch to a competitors. Migrating your (hypothetical) DRM-free library is a bit of a process, but something most anyone could do.

    ^ This is what they’re aftaid of. People being able to jump ship. Corporate not being in complete control. Customers not being fully dependant on their overlord.

    This is why DRM is a thing. This is why EULAs state “you own a single, non-transferrable, by us voidable at any time, free (for now) licence to use this software”. This is why most privacy policies ask way too many things.

    It’s pure greed. Why should I, as a bookseller, make it possible for you to hypothetically switch to someone else when I can do the exact opposite? Why should I not download all your contacts, just in case I need them? Why should I not use your IP/region for “tailored” pricing?

    Scarcity has nothing to do with it. There are ways of obtaining books online. DRM-free or not. Free or not. If consumers were so efficient in their consuming, Amazon’s book business would either sell books for pennies to today’s price in dollars, or they’d shut it down for their more profitable ventures.

    What they need as sick and greedy bastards is control.










  • Yeah, I assumed. No way 86 pages are needed for a proof of ‘1+1=2’.

    That being said, it’d be nice for there to actually be a “proof” of 1+1=2, made as concise and simple as possible, while retaining all the precision required of such proof, including a complete set of axioms.

    This, obviously isn’t is, nor does it try to. It’s not the “1+1=2” book, ot’s the theoretical fpindations of matheđatics book. Nothing wrong with that.


  • What’s missing here os the definition that we’re working in base 10. While it won’t be a proof, Fibbonaci has his nice little Liber Abbaci where he explains arabic numerals. A system of axioms for base 10, a definition of addition and your succession function would suffice. Probably what the originals were going for, but I can’t imagine how that would take 86 pages. Reading it’s been on my todo list, but I doubt I’ll manage 86 pages of modern math designed to be harder to read than egyptian hieroglyphs.




  • While it might not seem so at first, suicide by tylenol is actually pretty hard to accomplish.

    You’re gonna have a hard tike dying. In more ways than one:

    The symptoms are excruciating and start at 7 grams. That’d be 28 standard tablets or 14 high-dose ones. It takes a long time for it to kill you, so even with the right dose, it’ll be hours of agony. Stuff like convulsions and excrutiating pain, mostly in the stomach. In the later stage as the liver fails, you turn yellow and feel even more unwell, often with vomiting (but by then the drug’s probably been absorbed).

    That being said, 7 g is not nearly enough to do any real damage. LD50 in mice is 2 g per kg of body weight, which comes to 280 high-dose tablets for the average adult. That’s a giant box of skittles. A box which you need to down fast, before the horrible symptoms kick in and dissuade you from continuing. However, mice aren’t humans, so the dosage information is probably not too precise. In any case, the difference between the unpleasant dose and a lethal one is huge.

    Even if you were to do this, chances are someone will find you and you’ll end up in the ER. A basic tox screen will quickly reveal the cause, and you’ll be detoxed promptly. And after a liver transplant, chances of surviving are high - assuming you took a large enough dose to warrant one.

    All in all, the death rate from tylenol poisoning is 0.1%. That does include accidental ones as well (which cause no real damage), so the statistic for actual suicide attempts is higher, but not by much.