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   abolitionmedia @[email protected] · 2024-11-04 · 19:14 UTC

   Introduction

   On May 25, 2020, police in Minneapolis Minnesota murdered George Floyd in cold blood. Responding to allegations of counterfeit money, police arrested Floyd, with one officer kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ultimately suffocating him. The killing was captured on video and quickly spread across the internet.

   Protests soon followed. The first protest organized in Minneapolis was on May 26. By May 28 the protests had spread to the nearby cities of St Paul and Duluth with riots occurring in Minneaopolis that evening. Mostly notably, the third precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was besieged and burned. Minnesota activated the National Guard on May 29 in response to the unrest.1  The American state’s disastrous response to COVID-19, massive unemployment, and indiscriminate police killings that disproportionately target people of colour provided the impetus for an enormous and unprecedented outpouring of rage; protests, many of them violently targeting the police, spread across the United States like wildfire.

   While the initial uprising was ferocious in its explosive anger and militancy, within just three weeks the protests seem to have been channeled largely into the decidedly less militant demand of “Defund the police.” What happened? I largely agree with what Kandist Mallett wrote in a brilliant article in Teen Vogue, in which she argued that: “those in power…are working tirelessly to destroy this wave of unrest before it becomes a tsunami they cannot control.… They are trying to kill this movement.”2 The defanging of the George Floyd Uprising was not accidental but was rather a deliberate attempt on the part of the American ruling class to regain social control in the wake of the most militant protests in recent memory—and, as a movement, possibly the largest in U.S. history.

   What I want to do in this article is to examine the dimensions of how this defanging took place: how, within the space of two weeks, we went from burning down a police station to making small budgetary demands. I argue that the massive effort to defang the George Floyd Uprising should be understood as a deliberate counter-insurgency operation, combining the (sometimes coordinated) efforts of: various police forces, the capitalist media, the American military, NGOs, the Democrats, both state and federal governments, and other liberal establishment figures. What I also want to show is that these efforts were not extraordinary: there was no shadowy conspiracy to intervene. Rather, each of these apparatuses functioned exactly as intended to in order to defend the existing capitalist order. By examining the response to the George Floyd Uprising, the left can gain a better understanding of just how difficult it will be to overthrow capitalism and the capitalist state and potentially avoid pitfalls in the future.

   Before continuing, I want to address the initial and most obvious opposition to my argument. If the efforts to defang the protests should be understood as a counter-insurgency, then it stands to reason that the George Floyd Uprising should be considered an insurgency. Is this not hyperbolic? Given the extent of the crisis of legitimacy the protests created for the American state, I do not think it is hyperbolic at all. As Kristian Williams argued in “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing”, insurgency and counter-insurgency is precisely the lens through which the American state views much of its domestic policing activity, from gang-related operations through to protest management.3

   The uprising truly created a crisis of legitimacy for the American state. It needs to be stated outright that the burning of a police station and the forced retreat, under siege, of the police inside is unprecedented in the history of modern American protest. The vulnerability of the police was put on full display: the following night police were attacked in Los Angeles and New York, among other locations. The National Guard was deployed throughout the United States. While not as historically unprecedented for dealing with dissent, there were concerns, at least in Minnesota, that the National Guard would be insufficient to quell the uprising. Governor Tim Walz on May 30 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “We do not have the numbers… We cannot arrest people when we are trying to hold ground.”4  Three days later, a Senior Airman in the Minnesota National Guard said in an interview that he was “waiting for the scales to tip” with regards to the “riot purgatory” that existed; the National Guard had, as of June 2, been unable to gain control of the city.5 Trump was even rushed to his White House bunker in response to protests in Washington D.C.; the last time those bunkers were used was during the September 11 attacks.6 Transit workers used their collective power to refuse to transport arrested protestors.7 Inspired by the protests, longshore workers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union struck and shut down ports across the West Coast in mid-June.8 And in terms of putting numbers to the crisis of legitimacy faced by the American state, on June 3 a Monmouth University survey reported that 54% of Americans thought that the burning of the precinct was justified, higher than the level of support enjoyed by either Biden or Trump.9

   Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency

   The United States military, in Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, defines an insurgency as: “The organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.” Counter-insurgency then is defined as “Comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes.”10

   It is worth quoting from the manual at length to demonstrate the sophistication with which the U.S. Military approaches counter-insurgency operations.

   Highlighting the specificity of counter-insurgency operations, the manual argues that:

   COIN [counter-insurgency] is distinguished from traditional warfare due to the focus of its operations—a relevant population—and its strategic purpose—to gain or maintain control or influence over—and the support of that relevant population through political, psychological, and economic methods.11

   Central to how the U.S. Military sees insurgency is the question of political legitimacy:

   The struggle for  legitimacy  with  the  relevant population is typically a central theme of the conflict between the insurgency and the HN [host nation] government.  The HN government generally needs some level of legitimacy among the population to retain the confidence of the populace and an acknowledgment of governing power.  The insurgency will attack the legitimacy of the HN government while attempting to develop its own legitimacy with the population.  COIN should reduce the credibility of the insurgency while strengthening the legitimacy of the HN government.12

   And in turn, central to the question of legitimacy is the task of building and controlling narratives:

   COIN planners should compose a unifying message (the COIN narrative) that is consistent with the overarching USG narrative, which is coupled to the USG [U.S. government] objective.  Narrative is a structure of planned themes from which both messages and actions are developed.  Narrative provides a common thread of communicative influence.  The objective speaks to desired outcome; narrative communicates the story of the how and why of an operation.  Common themes within a COIN narrative may be: reinforcing the credibility and perception of legitimacy of the HN and USG COIN operation, exploiting the negative aspects of the insurgent efforts, and preemptively presenting the expected insurgent argument along with counter-arguments. … The  COIN  narrative  should  be  the  result  of meticulous  target-audience  analysis  conducted  by  cultural  and  language  subject  matter experts …  The COIN narrative should provide the guidance from which themes, actions, and messages can be planned in  support of the  COIN objectives.13

   Narrative construction and control is reiterated in practical terms later in the Manual:

   In COIN, the information flow can be roughly divided into information which the USG requires to guide its political-military approach (i.e., knowledge of local conditions) and information which the USG wishes to disseminate to influence populations.  At the same time, counterinsurgents also seek to impede the information flow of insurgent groups—both their intelligence collection and their ability to influence the relevant population. 14

   One of the tactics emphasized to impede the ability of insurgents to influence the target population is working with local authorities—especially non-governmental ones like religious leaders, and NGOs- to coopt the message of the insurgency and explicitly to moderate it.15 This latter point is extremely important; while moderate movements may enjoy more popular support, they are also far less successful at winning their demands.16 It is therefore in the interest of those defend the existing order to support the moderate elements of a movement.

   All this is to say then that the U.S. Military understands insurgency and counter-insurgency as being not just a military question, but rather a question of politics. To this end, the Manual heavily emphasizes the importance of political action in counter-insurgency operations:

   To be effective, officials  involved  in  COIN  should  address  two  imperatives—political  action  and security—with equal urgency, recognizing that insurgency is fundamentally an armed political competition….  COIN  functions,  therefore,  include  informational,  security, political, economic, and development components, all of which are designed to support the overall objective of establishing and consolidating control by the HN government. … This is the core of COIN, because it provides a framework around which all other programs and activities are organized.  As described above, depending on the root causes of the insurgency, the strategy may involve elements of  political reform,  reconciliation,  popular  mobilization,  and governmental  capacity building.17

   If we understand insurgency and counter-insurgency as involving both a military and political aspect, in which the political is primary, with insurgency being primarily about building a counter-legitimacy to the state and counter-insurgency being primarily about the political isolation of insurgents through the creation of narratives, we can begin to see how such an understanding is useful to apply to American domestic politics. The George Floyd Uprising saw insurgents directly undermine the legitimacy of the existing state, especially the police, through both armed and political action. In turn, the state and establishment responded with both armed and political actions, the latter in the form of co-optation and narrative control.

   But the connections between American counter-insurgency and domestic politics are not just on the discursive level. In “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing”, Kristian Williams provides an excellent overview of the material relationship between American military counter-insurgency programs and American policing. This is specifically evident with regard to trends towards the militarization of the police and so-called “Community Policing” initiatives. Williams demonstrates how, in a modern example of the “imperial boomerang”18, many of the methods employed by modern police forces were developed and refined by the American military, including during its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In turn, the military partnered with police forces to learn how to better control conquered populations, be they black people living in American cities or Iraqis living under American occupation in Iraq.19

   Of particular interest is the role that NGOs play in this process. As was noted earlier, the U.S. Military makes special mention of NGOs in the process of counter-insurgency. An earlier version of the Manual, published in 2006 and authored by David Petraeus, is more explicit, remarking that “some of the best weapons for counterinsurgents do not shoot” and referring to NGOs as “force-multipliers”. Williams is able to show how NGOs were directly involved in de-escalating responses of the community to murders committed by American police in Oakland, as well as involved in anti-gang activities in Boston. Both of these separate efforts fall under the playbook of counter-insurgency.20

   Before going in depth into the George Floyd Uprising, it is worthwhile looking at the “why” of counter-insurgency. Why is it that the police and military have developed a comprehensive strategy intended to undermine threats to the existing order? Fundamentally, the modern state exists to protect the interests of the capitalist class—namely the continuation of capital accumulation and exploitation—against the interests of everyone else. In turn, specific states exist to protect the specific interests of their specific capitalist classes. Thus anything that attempts to undermine capitalism, or the ability of capitalists to exploit, must be itself undermined. The state has a myriad of tools at its disposal to help with this process. Some are ideological (they convince people exploitation is in their own interest) whereas others, like the police, are repressive. Insofar as the goal of counter-insurgency is ultimately to protect the accumulation of capital, we should understand counter-insurgency as extending beyond just the actions of the repressive apparatuses of the state. What I will explore below is that in this case, counter-insurgency was a joint effort of the entire American ruling class, both inside and outside the state, to defang the George Floyd Uprising. The American ruling class used both violent and non-violent means to defang the uprising: they deployed what could be called a carrot-and-stick approach in order to protect the social order.

   The Carrot…

   The Media Narrative

   In the days following the murder of George Floyd, the media worked tirelessly to defang the George Floyd Uprising. They did this not by creating reality through discourse, but by selectively and pointedly reporting on certain aspects of reality. As a result, they encouraged people to think about the uprising in specific ways, and in turned called them into action in specific ways. I will focus primarily on the Minneapolis Star Tribune; the narrative trends developed there were later repeated in media across the United States.

   Initial media reaction to the uprising directly condemned property destruction. After a Target was looted on the night of May 27, the Star Tribune spent the following day reporting on the impact that riots would have on small businesses.21 True to form, the Star Tribune printed a call for peace from the family and partner of George Floyd22 as well as from “political, faith, community leaders” calling for an “end to riots.”23 The latter story was particularly interesting insofar as the group was called together for a conference by Minnesota governor Tim Walz, and included both church leaders and NGO managers. Here is an example of a top state official picking and choosing who counts as a “community leader” without direct input from the community. In turn, the Star Tribune reported on the meeting treating these externally hand-picked “community leaders” as though their legitimacy derived from the community itself.

   In the following days, the Star Tribune shifted focus to the human cost of the riots to the local community. The publication blamed the riots for creating a food desert due to the closing of large corporate grocery stores.24 Rioters were also blamed for the lack of access to medicine now faced by the local community due to the closure of pharmacies.25 Rioters were alleged to have burned down nearly 200 units of affordable housing, thus exacerbating the housing crisis.26 The riots were also allegedly responsible for devastating Minneapolis’ famed Lake Street, home to immigrant-owned business and a hub, according to the Star Tribune, of multi-culturalism.27

   In its discussion of the immediate impact of the uprising on the local community, not once did the Star Tribune go beyond surface-level condemnations of the rioters. Suddenly concerned with access to food and medication, the stories did not include discussions as to why the closure of a few grocery stores could create a food desert. There was no discussion on the increased price of food and wealth-disparity. There was no discussion on the monopolization of food sources by large chains. There was no discussion on the effects of for-profit healthcare on access to medicine. No discussions on gentrification and stagnant wages leading to the necessity of specifically designated “affordable” housing. No discussions on the context of the riots: namely 40 million unemployed Americans staring down a pandemic with miniscule government relief. No discussion of looting as a means of getting necessities such as medicine, food, and clothing; no discussion as to why Target and pharmacies became targets. Instead the riots were presented largely without context, as simply an irrational outburst of anger, alone causing problems to the community. Those fighting back against the existing order were blamed for the worst effects of the very order they fought against.

   In addition to direct condemnation, the Star Tribune also took a more nuanced approach to the riots. Instead of the riots being an organic expression of community anger, they were presented—both by the media, and the government—as being the work of (usually white) “outside agitators”. Rioting was purported to be the work of secret white-supremacists that had infiltrated the protests in order to cause mayhem. In that same meeting of community leaders called together by Tim Walz on May 30, the executive director of the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage put it succinctly: “White people from other communities are coming into my community, our communities as some kind of perverse poetry, as if it wasn’t bad enough already. … Go home now. The fascists on the plan right now, turn around.”28 The Star Tribune reported on an Illinois man who had been arrested with explosives in Minneapolis, who had specifically traveled there to riot.29 The mayor of St Paul and the governor of Minnesota had each tweeted that the vast majority -80% to all- of the arrestees in the week preceding June 6 had been from out-of-state despite the fact that there was no evidence to back up such claims. The claims were so ludicrous that the Star Tribune ran a story walking back many of the claims about outside agitators; well after the damage had been done to the protests.30

   The goal of these various media narratives—first, condemning the riots; second, emphasizing the damage to the community; and third, blaming outside agitators- was to drive a dual process of bifurcation within the protest movement. The goal of the ruling class was on the one hand to separate “peaceful” liberal protestors from the more radical element, both to avoid radicalization of the moderate protestors but also to isolate the radicals within the movement. Second, the goal was to lump the radical protestors together with apolitical opportunist looters, whether or not the latter group actually existed, and in turn ignore the radical critiques of both policing and society as a whole that the radicals put forward. Thus the establishment attempted to call into being two groups: a group of good, peaceful, moderate protestors; and a second group of opportunist, violent protestors who did not care about the injustice the protests were about. The tactics and message of the first group was to be lauded, whereas the tactics and message of the second group was to be condemned.

   Meanwhile, seemingly out of nowhere, another narrative appeared in the media. Across both social and traditional media outlets, stories appeared showing police supporting the protests. Most famous were the images of police (and sometimes National Guard) kneeling with the protestors. Often times this was displayed as the result of a request from the “good protestors”, who were then portrayed as applauding police initiative. However, in this case reality cut through the media spin: the American police were simply too vicious for their “spontaneous” (more on this below) outpouring of empathy to be taken seriously. There were abundant accounts of the same police transitioning from kneeling to attacking protestors within the space of hours.

   As the protests spread in the early weeks of June, it was no longer possible for the media to rely on the “outside agitator” platitude. Indeed, with protests in literally every major city in the United States, there was no “outside” for the agitators to come from. And with the utter inhumanity of the police on full display, stories of police taking a knee simply didn’t hold water. The media then turned to focusing almost exclusively on the efforts of liberal NGOs engaged in “rebuilding” efforts31, and the activities of the “good” protestors. The degree to which the “good” protestors were signal-boosted by the media is evident in the speed at which the “Defund the Police” slogan, itself a moderated version of the already moderate “abolish the police” demand, became the public rallying cry of the movement as a whole.32 Finally, towards mid-June, with the protests now largely contained and the radical element isolated, the media began largely ignoring the massive protests that are still occurring, instead only providing local coverage of incidental events.

   While I have focused largely on the narrative created in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the same pattern (from demonization, to outside agitators, to focusing on the community cost, the good/bad protestor division, the police sympathy, to NGOs and liberals, to ultimately ignoring the movement) was a pattern that was repeated more-or-less within all major media sources in North America. Why was this the case? The similarity in editorial line between media companies does not indicate direct coordination between media onwers nor does it point to state intervention or censorship. Rather, insofar as media in North America is either owned by large corporations or run by the state, the commonality of interests that exists between rich owners and rich state managers is inevitably reflected in the editorial line of the media which they run.33 It makes total sense then that the media would relay a narrative which had as its effect the defanging of the George Floyd Uprising; such an action was absolutely within the interests of the large capitalists which control the media. The capitalist class, by owning the media and therefore controlling its content, was able to utilize media narratives as part of the counter-insurgency effort against the George Floyd Uprising.

   In the case of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the connection between ownership and editorial line could not be clearer. Glen Taylor, the billionaire former state senator, admitted as much when he bought the newspaper in 2014. In an interview with MinnPost, he stated that his ownership of the paper would result in the editorial line being less liberal.34 It is unsurprising then that the overall editorial position of the paper reflects Taylor’s public position, namely that the problem is not specifically law enforcement and that protests are only legitimate if they are peaceful.35 Insofar as the George Floyd Uprising threatened the existing order in Minneapolis, an order that Glen Taylor benefitted from, the Star Tribune would come out against the uprising. This same process played out across the United States over the course of the uprising.

   The Copaganda Machine

   No account of how the media treated the George Floyd Uprising would be complete without a discussion of something that is often overlooked in accounts of reactionary media spin: the absolutely massive public relations machine employed by the police themselves. While it is possible that the speed with which stories of police “taking a knee” with protestors went viral was entirely natural, it is far more likely that in the wake of the largest anti-police protests in a generation that the police PR machine jumped into overdrive.

   The goal of police public relations (PR) is, like any public relations campaign, to influence how the public views the police. In one article written for Police One, the largest English-language online community of police boasting literally tens of thousands of members, the point of police PR is described as “to establish a positive relationship with the community before an incident occurs.” The point of PR is directly contextualized to counteract the public’s reactions to racist police terror: “Events dating back to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, Rodney King, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray and others have been covered extensively in the media and have tarnished the reputation of many agencies. The public relations team must establish or repair the image of the agency within the community.”36 In another article on the same website, another officer describes the utility of “branding” (using a PR campaign to build a police “brand”) insofar as it allows police departments to control messaging and make clear a department’s “value proposition.”37 The goal of branding is to build preconceptions about the role of police, thus filtering any observations through the preconceived image of how police should act. This allows the police to have greater impunity in their actions, as anything they do is seen immediately through the lens of police being good and necessary protectors.

   On the surface this seems fairly obvious and innocuous. All firms employ PR strategies in one form or another, in which the firm seeks to use the media to influence public reaction to the firm. However if we consider the social role of police, namely a repressive apparatus of the capitalist state designed to protect the conditions which allow for exploitation, the police use of PR becomes more sinister. Police directly attempt to manipulate public perceptions of their actions in their favour, including racist murder.

   How widespread is the police use of PR? It is difficult to say. An examination of several police budgets over the past years of cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Toronto turned up little information; the police are remarkably good at concealing precisely what they spend their money on. There is some scattered information though that suggests that the police spend a staggering amount on PR. For instance, in 2016 the Denver Police Department was revealed to have spent $1.3 million over three years on its “media relations unit”.38 The Metropolitan Police in the UK had, in 2015, a 10 million pound annual PR budget that employed 100 communications staff, with a police across the UK spending 36 million pounds annually on PR.39 The LAPD, rather than just employing a Public Information Officer (PIO), has an entire Public Relations Unit.40 In Toronto, the 2019 police budget requested an additional $7.9 million to be partially used on nine new positions in the Corporate Communications Unit, increasing the total staff from 16 to 25, to be used to “help increase capabilities in public relations, internal communication and digital strategy.”41 And in 2020, the NYPD allotted $3.2 million for public relations, in order to tell their “side of the story.”42

   Direct police department expenses on PR are just one of the PR avenues available to police. Police unions also hire PR firms to improve the image of their officers or to advance specific goals.43 Individual police officers can also hire PR firms to represent them in times of need. One such service, Cop PRotect, allows officers to pay $50 per month for guaranteed representation if something should go wrong. In a story placed in Police Magazine, the need for such a service is related directly to the Ferguson Uprising:

   Cops today are completely at the mercy of activists who don’t care about the truth … Darren Wilson was nearly murdered and now lives in hiding, while the man who tried to kill him is declared a hero by activists. Cop PRotect gives cops like Darren Wilson a trusted friend to tell their stories in ways agency information officers, union representatives and the media cannot or will not.44

   In this case, the firm was created directly to mitigate community blowback against individual officers in the wake of racist police terror.

   While the amount that is spent on pro-police PR is hard to find, the indirect effects make it more obvious. Indeed, there exists an entire parasitic cottage industry of pro-police PR firms and consulting services, which exist solely to increase public perceptions in the police. For instance, a quick search turned up John Guilfoil Public Relations which specializes in the public sector, including the police. A testimonial from the chief of the Massachusetts Police Department states that the firm “provides an extremely valuable service to those agencies that want to be proactive in … getting out a positive message to the community.”45 PolicePR in Indiana offers a Public Information Officer boot camp, in partnership with the Greenwood Police Department.46 Melissa Agnes, a crisis management strategist who has been featured on Police One, has a whole series of articles and talks dealing specifically with police misconduct, ranging from “Discussing the Divide Between Police and Their Communities” to “Discussing The #Ferguson Crisis with Tim Burrows”.47 None of these firms or services would exist if the police were not paying for them.

   Police PR strategies are not limited to traditional media. To give the strategies a more organic feel, police forces and their hired PR firms make frequent use of social media in order to help control the narrative around their actions. Police Chief Magazine warns officers that “Hiding and Hoping is Not a PR Strategy”; police forces not only need to monitor social media to see what perception of the police force is after an incident, but must also build “a social media presence”. This latter point can include spreading information about a suspect in the event that video showing police misconduct spreads.48 As part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s ‘Community Oriented Policing Services’ (COPS) Strategic Communication Practices guide, there is an entire section on the importance of social media.49 Another article on Police One suggests that police departments send officers onto Reddit, both to get ahead of a story, but also to intervene in the discussions as police.50 These efforts can be bolstered by using “community outreach programs” to “build an online army of supporters.”51

   Lest anyone think that the police simply use social media to inform their audience about their activities, the police consciously use social media to manipulate public opinion during moments of crisis. Taken from another Police One article (a fantastic resource for those wanting to understand the mindset of police), this one published ominously on May 28, 2020, titled “12 things every police department’s civil unrest plan needs”, there is an entire section on social media. Departments are instructed to be aware that protestors can use social media to amplify and coordinate their activity; departments should also be aware and be ready to counter those that would “lower the perception of [their] department.” If that fails, there’s always the National Guard.52 Force Science News published an article/advertisement featuring Melissa Agnes in 2018, which advised departments to have prepared a ‘Communications Bible’ to help navigate crises such as “officer-involved shootings”.53 In a mid-June Police One leadership briefing, after weeks of anti-police protests, authors mockingly reflected: “Now do you recognize the power of social media?” arguing that police “must start viewing… social media as an integral tool in policing.”54

   All this is to say there exists a massive and highly coordinated police PR machine, which the police use to try and directly control media narratives in their favour. They do this as part of a broader effort to maintain the current social order. While it is impossible to prove this soon, I strongly suspect that it was this machine which was responsible for the flood of sympathetic stories about the police that featured prominently across traditional and social media in early June. Despite the best efforts of the police, their unions, and their employed PR firms, they were unable to shift the broader media narrative for more than a few days; the brutal actions of police across the United States spoke for themselves and undermined attempts to portray the police in a positive light.

   While ultimately unsuccessful, the wave of pro-police media in early June gave credibility to the more moderate argument that the institution of policing itself is not the problem, but rather that it is only some “bad apples” amidst an otherwise salvageable police force. This in turn gave more ideological power to moderate and liberal elements, the so-called “good protestors”, within the broader protest movement. To tie this back into counter-insurgency, control over information in the form of both narrative construction and information dissemination is one of the main tools of counter-insurgency strategies. The police consciously did just this, and in the process strengthened the moderates within the movement.

   The Non-Profit Industrial Complex

   As noted earlier, the U.S. military considers NGO partnerships to be a vital part of counter-insurgency efforts. Much has been written about the negative effects of non-profits on social movements. In the classic collection of essays titled The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Andrea Smith argues that capital and the capitalist state use nonprofits to: monitor and control social movements, divert public resources into private hands, manage and control dissent, redirect activist efforts towards careerism and away from mass-based modes of organizing, allow corporations to mask exploitation through philanthropy, and encourage social movements to model themselves in terms of structure and politics after capitalist models.55 For the purposes of this essay, I want to focus on two areas: first, how NGOs have a moderating effect on the politics of a movement. Second, I will talk about how NGOs frequently work with the police to protect the current social order under the guise of changing it.

   How is it that non-profits are able to moderate social movements? The capitalist class is well aware of their own interests and spends an inordinate amount of money defending them. In the process, they create philanthropic foundations. These philanthropic foundations not only allow capitalists to transfer wealth inter-generationally without taxation (giving their children positions in the foundations) but also fund charitable activities, such as non-profits. There is a catch though: the capitalists will not fund anything that does not fit their interests, namely the continuation of exploitation. They are happy, for instance, to fund affordable housing initiatives insofar as those initiatives do not tackle the root causes of homelessness, namely private property. Capitalist foundations therefore provide resources to NGOs which act in line with their interests. In turn, NGOs knowingly moderate themselves in order to better secure resources. Furthermore respectable NGOs can become the public face of a movement, effectively forcing the more radical organizations out of the public eye.

   The Civil Rights and anti-police movements are full of examples of the moderating effects of NGOs. For instance, in the 1960s white philanthropist Stephen Currier set up the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership in order to channel foundation funding to Civil Rights groups. The so-called ‘Big Six’ were brought together; of the six, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the most radical of the groups, received the least amount of funding. More radical groups, such as the Nation of Islam, were completely excluded. In 1963 Malcolm X specifically criticized the Big Six and the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership in his famous ‘Message to the Grass Roots’ speech in which he reflected on the March on Washington which had taken place earlier that year.56 The goal of these maneuvers by white philanthropists was clear: fund the more moderate element of the Civil Rights movement to avoid the movement taking a radical turn and undermining the ability for American capitalism to operate.57

   Fast forward 50 years, and the same pattern reoccurs. In Oakland in 2009, non-profits directly intervened to deradicalize the response to the killing of Oscar Grant. Ahead of a major rally in January 2009, the Oakland police arranged meetings with various nonprofit and church leaders in order to defang the protests before they even began.58 Religious leaders asked their congregations to not attend the protests. A coalition of NGOs came together and formed the Coalition Against Police Execution (CAPE). CAPE explicitly called for a lack of militancy in their protests, and stood as a physical barrier between police and protestors. 59 In turn, CAPE became the public, legitimate face of the protests, which was reinforced through media coverage.

   The uprising in 2014 in Ferguson saw a similar process play itself out. There the NGO influence was given an organizational existence in the form of Black Lives Matter. I want to be clear here; when speaking of Black Lives Matter I am talking about the official organization and not the broader movement of the same name. Black Lives Matter, while first conceived of in 2013, organized its first major action in 2014 with the Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride in response to the killing of Michael Brown by the Ferguson police. Black Lives Matter became the public face of the movement. Despite the Ferguson uprising originating in riots, Black Lives Matter and other organizations planned a series of actions over the course of the summer of 2014 that channeled local activism into safer and less rebellious avenues.

   Following the Ferguson uprising, moderate elements of the Black Lives Matter movement became a relatively safe outlet for liberals to support and into which the capitalist class could channel outrage. Black Lives Matter and the constellation of new organizations and networks around it received an absolutely immense amount of donations from larger donors like The Ford Foundation and George Soros.60 The more liberal elements of the movement, able to secure donations, were able to take centre-stage. For instance, one recipient, the Organization for Black Struggle, used some of its funding to create the Hands Up Coalition. This coalition popularized the “hands up, don’t shoot” slogan used by protestors; this ran against slogans by more militant black power activists such as “arms up, shoot back” and “fists up, fight back”. More radical yet equally active groups, such as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, received no funding. In 2016, Black Lives Matter and 27 other organizations, as part of the Movement for Black Lives, issued a platform of demands titled A Vision for Black Lives. Rather than a comprehensive plan and program to mobilize the masses to fight for their own liberation, the document is a set of policy guidelines. The effect is that efforts are taken off the streets and channeled into traditional power structures where they are ultimately destined to fail.

   The founders of Black Lives Matter were first introduced to each other through an NGO known as Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD). The board of directors of BOLD, those who decide its political direction, is made up of managers of other NGOS.61 BOLD also receives an immense sum of money from private donors, such as through the “philanthropic intermediary” known as Borealis Philanthropy62 and through Funders for Justice.63 This latter group, also created in response to the Ferguson Uprising, in turn receives funding from The Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations; hardly groups interested in a radical transformation of the social order or the end of exploitation. I don’t bring this up to allege a conspiracy that Black Lives Matter is being secretly run by The Ford Foundation, but rather to show that even Black Lives Matter has its origins within the non-profit industrial complex milieu, which in turn effects its politics. Turning back to the George Floyd Uprising, it is unsurprising that in a recent Reddit Ask-Me-Anything, Kailee Scales, the Managing Director for Black Lives Matter, condemned the riots and announced efforts to channel the George Floyd Uprising into voter registration and “civic engagement” through the #WhatMatters2020 campaign.64

   The ways in which non-profits have attempted to moderate explosions of rage during the George Floyd Uprising are too many to list. One example I want to focus on, however, is particularly telling. On May 30, two days after the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis, a local non-profit called Pillsbury United Communities had a press conference. Pillsbury United Communities is an incredibly well established NGO; founded in 1879, it runs a number of outreach and education programs, community programs (such as free COVID-19 testing), as well as “social enterprises” including a grocery store. The press conference on May 30 brought together Jamie Foxx, Stephen Jackson, BLM activist Tamika Mallory, alongside George Floyd’s family. Speakers were explicit in their calls for peaceful protests, but generally did not condemn the riots. A peaceful rally followed.65 Thus at the height of the militant protests, people were asked by “legitimate” community leaders to temper their anger and engage in traditionally and easily ignored protests. These calls were amplified by liberals outside the community and the media.

   A few days after the rally, Pillsbury United Communities used George Floyd’s death to issue a fundraising call; it is unclear from their website how the money will be used to ensure “Justice for George Floyd”.66 But individual donations are not the only way that Pillsbury United Communities raises funds. It also receives donations from massive foundations such as the Greater Twin Cities United Way, the Minneapolis Foundation, and the St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation. The United Way, for instance, acts as a “philanthropic intermediary”, collection donations from large corporations, and then granting money to non-profits. In this specific case, the money given to Pillsbury United Communities comes from sources such as 3M, U.S. Bank, Cargill, and Target.67 The latter, notably, also provides hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to police foundations.68 One can see the issue of an organization fighting for justice against the police having similar funding sources to the police themselves. It is also unlikely that the capitalist class would fund those capable of truly undermining it.

   That an NGO intervened in a mass struggle to both channel the movement in a more liberal direction while monopolizing resources is not particularly surprising. What is particularly interesting though is Pillsbury United Communities’ connection to community policing. A 2006 report by the Minneapolis Department of Health & Family Support lists Waite House, a Pillsbury United Communities site, as a “Weed & Seed Safe Haven”.69 Weed and Seed programs, for context, gained prominence in 1992 after the Rodney King riots as a way to connect police and community leaders in order to ostensibly combat gang violence70; they made cohesive the militarization tactics (weed) and community policing tactics (seed) employed in counter-insurgency efforts.71 In December 2014, the FBI gave Pillsbury United Communities its “Director’s Community Leadership Award”, an annual award given to groups for crime prevention efforts.72 Then-president and chief executive, Chanda Smith Baker, accepted the award. Coincidentally, Chanda Smith Baker—now working for the Minneapolis Foundation—also sits on the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s newspeak titled “Working Group on Police-Involved Deadly Force Encounters”. The goal of the working group was to “identify ways to reduce deadly force encounters with law enforcement”73. Members of the group included the Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, the Minnesota Attorney General, Philando Castile’s (killed by police in Minnesota in 2016) uncle, and other judge’s, academics, politicians, and NGO managers. Tragically and ironically, the working group released its findings in February 2020; that George Floyd was murdered, just a few months later in a “police-involved deadly force encounter”, demonstrates the extent to which so-called community policing is useful to the community.

   One final interesting link between NGOs and the police in Minneapolis: as mentioned earlier, Chanda Smith Baker, after working for Pillsbury United Communities, went on to work as the Senior Vice President, Impact for The Minneapolis Foundation. The current president and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation is R.T. Rybak, who was also the former mayor of Minneapolis. R.T. Rybak also sits on the board of a company called Benchmark Analytics: an IT company which has designed a system capable of predicting when officers will become problematically violent. Rybak therefore has a direct material interest in “reforming” the police. In an article written on June 2, titled “I Was the Mayor of Minneapolis and I Know Our Cops Have a Problem”, Rybak recalls surveying the damage to Minneapolis after the riots with Chanda Smith Baker, before advertising his firm’s solution to police violence.74 Unsurprisingly he emphasizes the humanity of the police, and he sees the solution as being community policing informed by predicative behavior technology.

   The organizational and interpersonal links between NGO managers, politicians, police leadership, “community leaders”, and the board members of large capitalist firms points to the existence of a ruling capitalist class. The above is just a small illustration of how the ruling class rules in Minneapolis.

   To summarize all of this: Pillsbury United Communities is an established, well-respected local NGO. It is part of the non-profit industrial complex, relying on philanthropic intermediaries for much of its funding, which in turn are funded by massive corporations. It came out very vocally in the early stages of the George Floyd Uprising, urging a more liberal and institutional approach to activism as opposed to the riots. And, it has close ties to the Minneapolis Police Department and state police through community policing programs. It is just one textbook example of many of how NGOs act as elements of a counter-insurgency strategy.

   The Democrats

   The Democrats have been referred to as the “graveyard of social movements” insofar as they absorb, coopt, and disorganize them.75 Their approach to the George Floyd Uprising is no different. What the Democratic Party sought to do in the wake of the George Floyd Uprising was a combination of repression (in those places in which it exercised power, such as Minneapolis, New York, L.A., etc.) and coopt its energies into the Biden 2020 campaign. Given the unpopularity of Biden and the overall increasing disinterest in electoral politics by much of the left the attempt to coopt the movement, at least ostensibly, has been unsuccessful. It is, however, still worth examining in order to paint a full picture of the counter-insurgency campaign against the uprising.

   At the beginning of the uprising, the Democratic Party machine jumped into motion but was unsure how to act. While top Democrat strategists spoke to media about how the uprising could affect the election76 (indicating that they were in fact working on a response), there was little in the way of official high-level statement or actions for almost a week. Then on June 2 two fairly major events occurred. First, Biden publicly brought Julian Castro into his campaign; Castro had been a vocal proponent of liberal police reforms during his bid to become the Democratic nominee for president.77 Second,  Pelosi, the multi-millionaire Speaker of the House, asked the Congressional Black Caucus to draft a series of police reforms.78

   On June 8, following a ridiculous display in which Pelosi and other top Democrats took a knee wearing Ghanaian kente cloths, the Justice in Policing Act was revealed. The act is fairly milquetoast—far behind the nebulous demands of the uprising—and includes provisions for more easily prosecuting police in cases of brutality, mandatory body cameras, as well as a ban on chokeholds. The Act does absolutely nothing to abolish or even defund police departments. 79 Nor is the act likely to become law; even if the act was to pass the Republican-majority Senate, Trump has announced his attention to veto it.80

   Rather than an accident, the unlikelihood of the bill passing is a feature, one of the ways in which so-called “checks and balances” help protect the current order. The Democrats know this; had it been likely to pass the bill would have been even more muted. The inaction of the Democrats in the face of the George Floyd Uprising is not surprising; they are one of the two parties that have overseen the construction and maintenance of the white-supremacist order in the United States. Biden is himself a career segregationist and author of a 1994 crime bill81 which was a cornerstone in the construction of the modern for-profit prison behemoth.82 The Congressional Black Caucus has itself helped to make the police a “protected class”, and also contributed to the militarization of police through the 1033 program.83

   Despite the lack of success of the official Democrat cooptation attempt of the George Floyd Uprising, I want to point out one of the more insidious ways that the Democrats are attempting to coopt outrage against police murders through social movements themselves. It is worth first pointing out that Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, is a supporter of the centrist-wing of the Democrats, specifically Elizabeth Warren.84 Black Lives Matter has recently launched a campaign called #WhatMatters2020. The goal of the campaign is to bring “BLM supporters and allies to the polls in the 2020 U.S Presidential Election to build collective power and ensure candidates are held accountable for the issues that systematically and disproportionately impact Black and under-served communities across the nation.”85 A campaign video calls on people to vote for an America where “police are held accountable” and “where we have access to quality healthcare”. The problem with this campaign, of course, is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are even pretending to deliver on promises like this. Biden does not support medicare for all, and was an architect of the current racist criminal justice system. The #WhatMatters2020 campaign is a cynical sheepdog campaign, bringing black people angry at the current injustices of American white-supremacist capitalism back into the Democrats.

   Invasion of the Liberals

   Earlier in this article, I mentioned that the media was attempting to call into existence a group of “good”, peaceful protestors. I want to spend more time now talking about this process. Ideology is both produced by practice, but also exists as a way of calling particular types of people into activity.86 When the media began focusing almost exclusively on “good” protestors, it was at first inventing this category out of almost thin air; the line it was drawing was an artificial one. But by putting forward this ideological pole, the media called into action people who had hitherto not been involved. The media, alongside notable liberal politicians and other establishment figures, created a group of liberal protestors out of inactive liberals who now saw themselves and their own political predilections reflected in the ongoing uprising. Included in these efforts by the media and liberal establishment figures is a now-famous essay by former president Barrack Obama, posted to Medium on June 1, in which he said he supported the protests, condemned violence, and urged reform efforts to be focused on institutional channels.87

   The flip side of the liberal “call to action” is that it also acts as a safeguard against radicalization. When reality confronts ideology, it is often ideology that is changed. Reality forces a rupture in one’s worldview which can lead to radicalization. In this case it became difficult to substantiate the story of a good, neutral, and protective state in the face of ubiquitous police violence against even peaceful protestors. If reality can be changed or if powerful narratives can reinforce ideology, ideology is cemented rather than discarded. In this case, liberalism as a worldview was able to escape challenge due to the emergence of establishment liberals in support of the protests.

   The result of the liberalization of the protests on public opinion is interesting. By mid-June, 67% of Americans reportedly supported the ongoing protests. The racial breakdown was more stark: 60% of white people supported the protests, whereas 86% of black people supported them. Despite this, 59% of Americans (including 62% of white Americans compared with 43% of black Americans) believed that the protests were spurred on at least in part as a means for people to engage in criminal behavior.88 Thus the liberalization of the protests resulted in a situation in which the majority of a country deeply enmeshed in white supremacy supported protests proclaiming the value of black lives, despite the majority of the country materially benefitting from that same unjust racial hierarchy. That major politicians like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Governor of Massachusetts and presidential candidate Mitt Romney joined the protests—both politicians with significant power to change the conditions against which they protested- signals only that the political message of the uprising had shifted in the popular consciousness away from “dismantle white supremacy” to the base level of “black people are human”. That nearly one third of America could not even support such a basic affirmation of humanity is telling.

   The liberal invasion had three main effects on the uprising. First, the influx of liberals into the rallies not only led to the proliferation of protests and an increase in attendance, but also to their pacification. Protestors began to self-police, modifying their tactics in line with the interests of the existing order. Protestors made sure to demarcate themselves and their actions as “peaceful”, thus robbing themselves of even the specter of militancy. To a certain extent there is a degree of “selection bias” here; militant protestors are more likely to be arrested, and therefore over time the composition of a protest will naturally become more liberal. Police are aware of this and consciously seek to tie up activist time and resources in legal proceedings.

   Internally to the protests, liberal protestors acted like “peace police”, disrupting the activities of militants. Examples included liberals in Washington DC turning over a “rioter” to the police (at an anti-police march!) at the end of May,89 as well as the doxxing by liberal activists of Rayshard Brook’s girlfriend, pegged as an outside agitator.90 She is accused of setting fire to the Wendy’s outside of which her partner was murdered by police. Another high-profile example of the liberalization of the protests on the tactical level is Al Sharpton’s call for a march on Washington in August, which took place at the height of militant protests occurring in Washington D.C..91 Such a call, not to support the existing protests but to postpone them, was a calculated attempt to de-escalate the uprising.

   Second, the influx of liberals into the movement has paved the way for false victories. By this I mean superficial gains that ultimately leave the underlying power structure which gave rise to the protests unchallenged. Included here is the “Black Lives Matter” street mural in Washington D.C., various corporate black-washing campaigns, the changing of band names, and the cancelling of shows like COPS. One notes the irony of the mayor of New York ordering that “Black Lives Matter” be painted outside of Trump Towers while overseeing a police department which brutalizes black people and and while also opposing efforts to defund the NYPD.

   Third, the influx of liberals into the movement had an effect on defanging the demands of the movement. Black Lives Matter was quick to issue the demand to defund the police in the early days of the George Floyd Uprising: they explicitly pushed for a defunding of the police, without going into detail as to what that would entail.92 Other activists seized on the space this opened up and stated that “defund” meant “defund everything”. They argued that the police were not reformable and therefore had to be abolished.93 What followed was a discussion in the media about whether or not “defund” actually meant “defund”. There was no shortage of liberals assuring other concerned liberals that defunding didn’t actually mean that there would be no police.94 While Minneapolis has since begun steps to disband their police force, demands in other locations seem to ask for a portion of police budgets to be re-allocated to community resources, in line with the Movement for Black Lives policy demands.95

   The conceptual slippage of “defund” has not gone unnoticed by the police themselves. In a June 18 article on Police One, Mike Walker, a police officer for 27 years, wrote that “defunding is really just a way of saying reduced funding.”96 In the same article he offers assurance to worried police officers by noting that budget cuts were already on the agenda due to COVID-19, and that most municipalities legally cannot function without police due to their municipal charters.

   That at least some police are fine with temporarily defunding the police speaks to the heart of just how defanged a demand “defund the police” actually is. But “abolish the police” as a slogan absent a critique of the conditions that give rise to the police is itself a demand that does not cut to the heart of the matter. The police exist because capitalism requires force to defend inequality and exploitation. Without ending exploitation, there will still need to be some form of coercive apparatus to ensure the continued existence of exploitation. Thus the coercive functions of the police will be offloaded to other state apparatuses; there will still be violent, racist coercion whether or not the police exist. This is something that already happens; consider, for instance, the racist terror that child welfare services across Canada (not armed, not police) put Indigenous people through for years. The George Floyd Uprising opened the space for discussions about the fundamental nature of society, about capitalism, imperialism, and racial inequality in America. Liberals shifted the overton window to exclude visions of radical transformation, instead focusing on the degree to which police should be defunded. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s now viral Instagram post which stated that police abolition looks like white suburbia, an atomized capitalist dystopia, makes total sense in this context.97

   The liberal invasion resulted in a defanging of protest tactics, results, and even the demands themselves. This process, which was aided by the police, the media, and “legitimate” community leaders, was nothing less than the political side of a counter-insurgency campaign by the American ruling class directed against the George Floyd Uprising. Thus a movement which began with the burning of a police station has been transformed into one of requesting minor amendments to municipal budgets.

   …And the Stick

   The majority of the article has focused on the less-obvious methods that the American ruling class has used in its counter-insurgency efforts against the George Floyd Uprising. However, while counter-insurgency is more effective if it involves elements of soft power, no counter-insurgency effort is complete without open repression. The efforts against the George Floyd Uprising are no exception.

   It is hard to overstate the scale of the police operation against protestors over the past month. For instance, by June 2 there already been over 11 000 arrests of protestors.98 The volume of arrests was used as an excuse to temporarily suspend habeus corpus in New York.99 There have been numerous documented arrests and attacks on journalists from even liberal platforms such as CNN. To my knowledge there are no up to date figures on the total number of arrests. In terms of the intensity of the police response, over the past month there have been countless scenes of police using tear gas and pepper spray to clear otherwise peaceful protests. An online database has logged over 670 individual incidents of police brutality caught on video.100 Police have killed at least four protestors over the course of the uprising. Many more have been maimed.101 As a result there are at least 40 different lawsuits currently underway against police departments for brutality during the George Floyd Uprising.102

   As if the level of direct repression was not enough, there has also been an increase in surveillance of activists. A recent leak, titled “Blue Leaks”, has revealed that the FBI monitored social media extensively during the protests and forward information it thought relevant to local police departments.103 FBI agents have also harassed activists after they attended recent protests against police brutality.104 The goal of FBI harassment in general is to intimidate protestors and organizers into inactivity as a means of disorganizing movements. These most recent incidents are reminiscent of FBI surveillance and intimidation of the anti-war movement and COINTELPRO.

   The extraordinary level of police terror was not enough to contain the uprising. The National Guard was deployed to 31 states and Washington D.C.. This involved over 62 000 soldiers.105 The National Guard was itself involved in the violent repression of the protests.106 Over 200 cities imposed a curfew, which affected more than 60 million people.107 Trump went as far as to threaten to use the American military to impose order on cities where the protests could not be contained by conventional repression.108

   One final aspect to overt repression of protests which needs to be included is the role of far right organizations and militia groups. While these are ostensibly distinct from the state, there is significant overlap and cooperation between police forces and far right organizations; a now infamous 2006 FBI report details the extent to which white supremacists have infiltrated police departments.109 For instance, in early June police in Oregon were caught on video coordinating with the far-right Proud Boys to help them avoid arrest after they intimidated George Floyd protestors.110 Much has also been written about the so-called Boogaloo Movement, which has targeted anti-police brutality protests.111

   There have been many attacks by the far right on recent protests. Incidents include a mob of armed counter-protestors in Bethel, Ohio which attacked a black lives matter rally searching for “antifa”.112 The KKK has also been active in these efforts: they attacked a black lives matter rally in Nevada,113 and a local KKK leader in Virginia drove his car into a protest in mid-June.114 The autonomous zone set up in Seattle has also been a magnet for far-right attacks; on June 15 the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer entered the zone and beat a man,115 and there have been five shootings directed at the zone in recent weeks, somehow allowed by police. The most recent one resulted in the death of two attackers and injuries to a 14 year old boy.116 Far right groups have also announced a plan to “retake” the zone on July 4.117

   Police and national guard brutality, police harassment and surveillance, threats of military intervention, and attacks by the far right all serve as the coercive elements to the American establishment’s counter-insurgency efforts against the George Floyd Uprising. Without the threat of violence the “carrot” side of the “carrot and stick” formula would not be as attractive. The end goal however, is the same: the maintenance and defense of an order defined by exploitation and white supremacy.

   Conclusion

   Over the course of this article what I have sought to do is outline some of the ways that the American ruling sought to defend itself during the course of one of the largest threats to its own existence in recent years. I have shown how combined and coordinated efforts by: police forces, the military, capitalist media, NGOs, the Democrats, far-right groups, and liberal establishment figures have all combined to undermine the George Floyd Uprising. Thus far these efforts seem to have been rather successful.

   The beautiful thing about history, however, is that it is never predetermined. The future is not written. While the establishment has a mind-boggling array of resources and sophisticated counter-insurgency techniques at its disposal, it is not infallible. Indeed, it does (and has!) made mistakes. It is these mistakes that provide openings for revolutionary forces to intervene and change the existing social order. Even the outcome of these protests is not yet decided: they continue, and the protestors become increasingly sophisticated in fighting back. The massive uprising of the past few weeks has shown the degree to which the people do possess power. But the events have also shown the pitfalls into which movements of resistance can fall. By writing this article I hope to have exposed some of these pitfalls, so that liberation struggles now and in the future can avoid them.

   Notes

   1. ↩ VOA News, “Minnesota Calls National Guard to Quell Violent Protests in Minneapolis”.
   2. ↩ Kandist Mallett, “The Black Lives Matter Revolution Can’t Be Co-Opted By Police and Lawmakers”.
   3. ↩ Kristian Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing,” Interface, Vol 3, No 1, May 2011.
   4. ↩ Aaron Morrison and Tim Sullivan, “Minneapolis overwhelmed again by protests over Floyd death,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   5. ↩ Reid Forgrave, “On patrol in St. Paul, National Guard waits ‘for the scales to tip’”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 2020.
   6. ↩ Jamie Ehrlich, “The hidden history of the secret presidential bunker,” CNN Politics.
   7. ↩ Hilary Hanson, “NYC Transit Union Backs Bus Drivers Who Refuse To Transport Protestors For NYPD”. HuffPost U.S., May 30, 2020.
   8. ↩ Joe DeManuelle-Hall, “West Coast Dockers Stop Work to Honor George Floyd”. Labor Notes, June 11, 2020.
   9. ↩ Matthew Impelli, “54 Percent of Americans Think Burning Down Minneapolis Police Precinct Was Justified After George Floyd’s Death,” Newsweek, June 6, 2020.
   10. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, GL-5.
   11. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, xiii.
   12. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, I-7.
   13. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, I-8.
   14. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, III-6.
   15. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, III-14.
   16. ↩ Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Kovacheff, C. (2020). “The activist’s dilemma: Extreme protest actions reduce popular support for social movements”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication.
   17. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, III-5.
   18. ↩ Connor Woodman, “The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate back to the metropolis”.
   19. ↩ Kristian Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing,” Interface, Vol 3, No 1, May 2011.
   20. ↩ Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing”.
   21. ↩ Kavita Kumar and Miguel Otarola, “Small-business owners pick up the pieces after night of rage, destruction”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 28, 2020.
   22. ↩ Paul Walsh, “Seeing his city on fire would ‘devastate’ George Floyd, girlfriend says”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 28, 2020.
   23. ↩ Briana Bierschbach, “Minnesota’s political, faith, community leaders plead for an end to riots”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   24. ↩ John Ewoldt, “Minneapolis neighborhoods face food desert after looting closes multiple stores”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 2020.
   25. ↩ Kavita Kumar and Adam Belz, “In riot-hit Twin Cities neighborhoods, a hole where pharmacies used to be”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 2020.
   26. ↩ Jim Buchta, “Minneapolis vandalism targets include 189-unit affordable housing development.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 28, 2020.
   27. ↩ Kathleen Hennessy and Tim Sullivan, “Unrest devastates a city’s landmark street of diversity.” Minneapolis Star Tribune. May 31, 2020.
   28. ↩ Briana Bierschbach, “Minnesota’s political, faith, community leaders plead for an end to riots”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   29. ↩ Andy Mannix, “’We came to riot’: Illinois man livestreamed lighting fires, handing out explosives in Minneapolis, charges say”. Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 1, 2020.
   30. ↩ Torey Van Oot. “’Fog of conflict’: Minnesota officials responding to George Floyd protests, violence helped spread of misinformation”. Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 6, 2020.
   31. ↩ Kelly Smith, “Minneapolis, St. Paul foundations aim at rebuilding, criminal justice reform after riots.”. Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 5, 2020; “How To Give Back To Your Besieged Community”. CBS Minnesota, June 9, 2020.
   32. ↩ Sam Levin. “Movement to defund police gains ‘unprecedented’ support across U.S..” The Guardian, June 4, 2020; Jack Kelly. “The Movement To Defund Or Disband Police: Here’s What You Need To Know Now.” Forbes, June 9, 2020.
   33. ↩ Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media.
   34. ↩ Britt Robson, “New owner Glen Taylor: less liberal Star Tribune ahead.” MinnPost, April 16, 2014.
   35. ↩ Chris Haynes. “Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor calls George Floyd’s death ‘a shame’ and ‘a tragedy’”. Yahoo Sports, May 28, 2020.
   36. ↩ Dan Grossi, “Public relations in law enforcement: Is the PIO obsolete?” Police One, January 8, 2020.
   37. ↩ W. Michael Phibbs, “Why your police department needs a brand.” Police One, September 7, 2017.
   38. ↩ John Ferrugia, Brittany Freeman, Jason Foster. “Denver police defend public relations spending”. The Denver Channel, February 17, 2016.
   39. ↩ William Turvill. “UK police forces spend more than £36m a year on PR and communications”. Press Gazette, May 1, 2015.
   40. ↩ Los Angeles Police Department. “Public Relations Unit”, Official Site of The Los Angeles Police Department.
   41. ↩ Mark Saunders, Chief of Police. “Toronto Police Service—2019 Operating Budget Request”.
   42. ↩ Jake Offenhartz, “NYPD Defends Its Massive Budget As Social Services And Youth Programs Are Cut”. The Gothamist, May 15, 2020.
   43. ↩ Joel Rub, David Zahniser. “L.A. police union hires PR firm in bid to win pay raises”. Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2015.
   44. ↩ POL Staff. “PR Firm Launches Service to Defend Police Officers from Anti-Cop Activists.” Police Magazine, November 17, 2015.
   45. ↩ John Guilfoil Public Relations. “Sectors We Serve”.
   46. ↩ PolicePR.
   47. ↩ Melissa Agnes. “Discussing the Divide Between Police and Their Communities, on The Police Podcast”. Melissa Agnes: Crisis Management Strategist. January 27, 2015; Melissa Agnes. “TCIP #011—Discussing The #Ferguson Crisis with Tim Burrows”. Melissa Agnes: Crisis Management Strategist. August 17, 2014.
   48. ↩ Julie Parker. “Hiding and Hoping Is Not a PR Strategy.” Police Chief Magazine.
   49. ↩ Darrel W. Stephens, Julia Hill, Sheldon Greenburg. Strategic Communication Practices: A Toolkit for Police Executives.
   50. ↩ Sean Whitcomb, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee. “3 reasons your agency should be on Reddit.” Police One, May 2, 2019.
   51. ↩ P1 Staff. “Roundtable: How to match your agency’s social media strategy with community needs”. Police One, May 2, 2019.
   52. ↩ Heather R. Cotter. “12 things every police department’s civil unrest plan needs”. Police One, May 28, 2020.
   53. ↩ “Are you ready for the crisis that may be heading your way?” Police One, July 5, 2018.
   54. ↩ Yael Bar-tur, Mathew Rejis, “Now do you recognize the power of social media?”. Police One, June 12, 2020.
   55. ↩ Andrea Smith, “Introduction”, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, 3.
   56. ↩ Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots”. Black Past.
   57. ↩ Netfa Freeman, “Movement Ferguson, Beware the Nonprofit Industrial Complex”. Black Agenda Report, January 21, 2015.
   58. ↩ George Ciccariello-Maher, “Chronicle of a Riot Foretold”. Counterpunch, June 29, 2010.
   59. ↩ Advance the Struggle. “Justice for Oscar Grant: A Lost Opportunity?”. Advance the Struggle, July 15, 2009.
   60. ↩ Netfa Freeman, “Movement Ferguson, Beware the Nonprofit Industrial Complex”. Black Agenda Report, January 21, 2015.
   61. ↩ BOLD. “Board”. BOLD.
   62. ↩ Borealis Philanthropy. “Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity”.
   63. ↩ BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) Funding Page.
   64. ↩ “Let me be clear: we do not advocate violence in protests of any kind—not by any protester and not by police. We do not advocate or condone destruction of property. We believe in the value of human lives.” Reddit.
   65. ↩ Patrick Reusse. “Stephen Jackson, other activists score with straight talk at Minneapolis City Hall rotunda.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   66. ↩ Adair Mosley. “Justice for George Floyd”. Pillsbury United Communities, June 2, 2020.
   67. ↩ Greater Twin Cities United Way. “Corporate Partners” .
   68. ↩ Kari Paul. “How Target, Google, Bank of America and Microsoft quietly fund police through private donations”. The Guardian, June 18, 2020.
   69. ↩ Minneapolis Department of Health & Family Support. “City of Minneapolis Weed & Seed Initiative”.
   70. ↩ Community Capacity Development Office, U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs. Weed and Seed Implementation Manual.
   71. ↩ Kristian Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing,” Interface, Vol 3, No 1, May 2011.
   72. ↩ “FBI recognizes Pillsbury United Communities for its service to diverse neighborhoods.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 15, 2014.
   73. ↩ Working Group on Police-Involved Deadly Force Encounters. “Executive Summary of Recommendations”, 2.
   74. ↩ R. T. Rybak. “I Was the Mayor of Minneapolis and I Know Our Cops Have a Problem”. Benchmark Analytics, June 2, 2020.
   75. ↩ August H. Nimtz. “The Graveyard of Progressive Social Movements: The Black Hole of the Democratic Party”. MR Online, May 9, 2017.
   76. ↩ Brian Schwartz, “How Joe Biden’s leading VP contenders stack up in the wake of protests over George Floyd’s death”. CNBC, June 1, 2020; Daniel Strauss, “’A national crisis’: how the killing of George Floyd is changing U.S. politics”. The Guardian, May 30, 2020; Nicholas Fandos, “Congress Plans Hearings on Racial Violence and Use of Force by the Police”. New York Times, May 29, 2020.
   77. ↩ Suzanne Gamboa, “Joe Biden pulls Julian Castro into campaign, asks for help to ‘tackle police reform’”. NBC News, June 2, 2020.
   78. ↩ Kelsey Snell, Claudia Grisales. “Pelosi Asks Black Caucus To Come Up With Police Reforms Following Protests”. NPR, June 2, 2020.
   79. ↩ Catie Edmondson, “Democrats Unveil Sweeping Bill Targeting Police Misconduct and Racial Bias”, The New York Times, June 8, 2020.
   80. ↩ Lisa Mascaro, “Police overhaul dims, but House Democrats push ahead on vote”. Police One, June 25, 2020.
   81. ↩ German Lopez, “The controversial 1994 crime law that Joe Biden helped write, explained”. Vox, June 20, 2019.
   82. ↩ Glen Ford, “The Movement Gets BIG—and Its Enemies Reveal Themselves”. Black Agenda Report, June 4, 2020.
   83. ↩ Danny Haiphong, “The Rebellion Against Police Repression Must Guard Against ALL Enemies, Whether Red, Blue, or Green”, Black Agenda Report, June 17, 2020.
   84. ↩ Justine Coleman, “Warren endorsed by Black Lives Matter co-founder’s Black to the Future Action Fund”, The Hill, February 20, 2020.
   85. ↩ “BLM’s #WhatMatters2020”, Black Lives Matter.
   86. ↩ Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism.
   87. ↩ Barack Obama, “How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change”, June 1, 2020.
   88. ↩ Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Monica Anderson. “Amid Protests, Majorities Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Express Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement”. Pew Research Center, June 12, 2020.
   89. ↩ TooFab Staff, “DC Protestors Drag Rioter Into Police Custody”. Too Fab, June 1, 2020.
   90. ↩ Vincent Barone, “Accused Wendy’s arsonist Natalie White was Rayshard Brooks’ ‘girlfriend’: lawyer”. New York Post, June 23, 2020.
   91. ↩ Lisa Hagen, “Al Sharpton Calls for Aug. 28 March on Washington at George Floyd Memorial”. U.S. News, June 4, 2020.
   92. ↩ “#DefundThePolice”. Black Lives Matter, May 30, 2020.
   93. ↩ Miarame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.” The New York Times, June 12, 2020.
   94. ↩ Sean Boynton, “What does ‘defund the police’ really mean? Experts say confusion harming progress”. Global News, June 18, 2020; Amanda Arnold, “What Exactly Does It Mean to Defund the Police?”. The Cut, June 12, 2020; Andrew Ferguson, “‘Defund the Police’ Does Not Mean Defund the Police. Unless It Does.”. The Atlantic, June 14, 2020.
   95. ↩ “Invest-Divest”. Movement for Black Lives.
   96. ↩ Mike Walker, “The difference between police defunding and police disbanding”. Police One, June 18, 2020.
   97. ↩ Emily Dixon, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Asked About Defunding the Police and Her Answer Went Viral”. Marie Claire, June 12, 2020.
   98. ↩ Scott Pham, “Police Arrested More Than 11,000 People At Protests Across The U.S.”. BuzzFeed News, June 2, 2020.
   99. ↩ Jan Ransom, “Despite Virus, Hundreds Arrested in Unrest Are Held in Cramped Jails”. The New York Times, June 4, 2020.
   100. ↩ Greg Doucette, George Floyd Protest Police Brutality Videos.
   101. ↩ “Violence and controversies during the George Floyd protests”. Wikipedia.
   102. ↩ Stephen Gandel, “At least 40 lawsuits claim police brutality at George Floyd protests across U.S.”. CBS News, June 23, 2020.
   103. ↩ Rainer Shea, “Intelligence leaks reveal just how ready the police state is to crack down on dissent.” June 25, 2020.
   104. ↩ Chris Brooks, “After Barr Ordered FBI to “Identify Criminal Organizers,” Activists Were Intimidated at Home and at Work”. The Intercept_, June 12, 2020.
   105. ↩ Katie Warren and Joey Hadden, “How all 50 states are responding to the George Floyd protests, from imposing curfews to calling in the National Guard”. Business Insider, June 4, 2020.
   106. ↩ Dylan Lovan, Bruce Schreiner. “Investigators: Man fatally shot on night of protests was killed by Kentucky National Guard rifle”. Military Times, June 9, 2020.
   107. ↩ Maria Sacchetti, “Curfews follow days of looting and demonstrations.” The Washington Post, June 1, 2020.
   108. ↩ Christina Wilkie, Amanda Macias. “Trump threatens to deploy military as George Floyd protests continue to shake the U.S.”. CNBC, June 1, 2020.
   109. ↩ FBI Counterterrorism Division. “(U) White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement”.
   110. ↩ Rachel E. Greenspan, “Oregon police told armed white men that they didn’t want to look like they were ‘playing favorites’ when they advised them to stay inside after curfew”. Insider, June 5, 2020.
   111. ↩ Craig Timberg, “As Trump warns of leftist violence, a dangerous threat emerges from the right-wing boogaloo movement”. The Washington Post, June 17, 2020.
   112. ↩ Rachel E. Greenspan, “Violent counter-protesters mobbed a small-town BLM demonstration in Ohio amid false rumors of antifa”. Insider, June 16, 2020.
   113. ↩ Lee Brown, “Men in Ku Klux Klan-style hoods crash Nevada Black Lives Matter rally”. New York Post, June 11, 2020.
   114. ↩ “KKK ‘leader’ charged for attack on Black Lives Matter protesters”. BBC News, June 9, 2020.
   115. ↩ Kelly Weill, “The Far Right Is Stirring Up Violence at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”. The Daily Beast, June 16, 2020.
   116. ↩ Konstantin Toropin, “Another shooting in Seattle’s police-free autonomous zone kills man and critically injures boy”. CNN, June 29, 2020.
   117. ↩ “‘American Patriots’ are planning to retake the so-called Seattle “autonomous zone” from CHAZ insurrectionists”. Law Enforcement Today, June 16, 2020.

    

   Source: MROnline

   https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/11/04/anatomy-of-a-counter-insurgency-efforts-to-undermine-the-george-floyd-uprising/

   #copaganda #CounterInsurgency #Ferguson #GeorgeFloyd #GeorgeFloydRebellion #GeorgeFloydUprising #insurgency #WhatMatters2020

   #copaganda #counterinsurgency #ferguson #georgefloyd #georgefloydrebellion #georgefloyduprising
2. 

   abolitionmedia @[email protected] · 2024-11-04 · 19:14 UTC

   Introduction

   On May 25, 2020, police in Minneapolis Minnesota murdered George Floyd in cold blood. Responding to allegations of counterfeit money, police arrested Floyd, with one officer kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ultimately suffocating him. The killing was captured on video and quickly spread across the internet.

   Protests soon followed. The first protest organized in Minneapolis was on May 26. By May 28 the protests had spread to the nearby cities of St Paul and Duluth with riots occurring in Minneaopolis that evening. Mostly notably, the third precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was besieged and burned. Minnesota activated the National Guard on May 29 in response to the unrest.1  The American state’s disastrous response to COVID-19, massive unemployment, and indiscriminate police killings that disproportionately target people of colour provided the impetus for an enormous and unprecedented outpouring of rage; protests, many of them violently targeting the police, spread across the United States like wildfire.

   While the initial uprising was ferocious in its explosive anger and militancy, within just three weeks the protests seem to have been channeled largely into the decidedly less militant demand of “Defund the police.” What happened? I largely agree with what Kandist Mallett wrote in a brilliant article in Teen Vogue, in which she argued that: “those in power…are working tirelessly to destroy this wave of unrest before it becomes a tsunami they cannot control.… They are trying to kill this movement.”2 The defanging of the George Floyd Uprising was not accidental but was rather a deliberate attempt on the part of the American ruling class to regain social control in the wake of the most militant protests in recent memory—and, as a movement, possibly the largest in U.S. history.

   What I want to do in this article is to examine the dimensions of how this defanging took place: how, within the space of two weeks, we went from burning down a police station to making small budgetary demands. I argue that the massive effort to defang the George Floyd Uprising should be understood as a deliberate counter-insurgency operation, combining the (sometimes coordinated) efforts of: various police forces, the capitalist media, the American military, NGOs, the Democrats, both state and federal governments, and other liberal establishment figures. What I also want to show is that these efforts were not extraordinary: there was no shadowy conspiracy to intervene. Rather, each of these apparatuses functioned exactly as intended to in order to defend the existing capitalist order. By examining the response to the George Floyd Uprising, the left can gain a better understanding of just how difficult it will be to overthrow capitalism and the capitalist state and potentially avoid pitfalls in the future.

   Before continuing, I want to address the initial and most obvious opposition to my argument. If the efforts to defang the protests should be understood as a counter-insurgency, then it stands to reason that the George Floyd Uprising should be considered an insurgency. Is this not hyperbolic? Given the extent of the crisis of legitimacy the protests created for the American state, I do not think it is hyperbolic at all. As Kristian Williams argued in “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing”, insurgency and counter-insurgency is precisely the lens through which the American state views much of its domestic policing activity, from gang-related operations through to protest management.3

   The uprising truly created a crisis of legitimacy for the American state. It needs to be stated outright that the burning of a police station and the forced retreat, under siege, of the police inside is unprecedented in the history of modern American protest. The vulnerability of the police was put on full display: the following night police were attacked in Los Angeles and New York, among other locations. The National Guard was deployed throughout the United States. While not as historically unprecedented for dealing with dissent, there were concerns, at least in Minnesota, that the National Guard would be insufficient to quell the uprising. Governor Tim Walz on May 30 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “We do not have the numbers… We cannot arrest people when we are trying to hold ground.”4  Three days later, a Senior Airman in the Minnesota National Guard said in an interview that he was “waiting for the scales to tip” with regards to the “riot purgatory” that existed; the National Guard had, as of June 2, been unable to gain control of the city.5 Trump was even rushed to his White House bunker in response to protests in Washington D.C.; the last time those bunkers were used was during the September 11 attacks.6 Transit workers used their collective power to refuse to transport arrested protestors.7 Inspired by the protests, longshore workers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union struck and shut down ports across the West Coast in mid-June.8 And in terms of putting numbers to the crisis of legitimacy faced by the American state, on June 3 a Monmouth University survey reported that 54% of Americans thought that the burning of the precinct was justified, higher than the level of support enjoyed by either Biden or Trump.9

   Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency

   The United States military, in Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, defines an insurgency as: “The organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.” Counter-insurgency then is defined as “Comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes.”10

   It is worth quoting from the manual at length to demonstrate the sophistication with which the U.S. Military approaches counter-insurgency operations.

   Highlighting the specificity of counter-insurgency operations, the manual argues that:

   COIN [counter-insurgency] is distinguished from traditional warfare due to the focus of its operations—a relevant population—and its strategic purpose—to gain or maintain control or influence over—and the support of that relevant population through political, psychological, and economic methods.11

   Central to how the U.S. Military sees insurgency is the question of political legitimacy:

   The struggle for  legitimacy  with  the  relevant population is typically a central theme of the conflict between the insurgency and the HN [host nation] government.  The HN government generally needs some level of legitimacy among the population to retain the confidence of the populace and an acknowledgment of governing power.  The insurgency will attack the legitimacy of the HN government while attempting to develop its own legitimacy with the population.  COIN should reduce the credibility of the insurgency while strengthening the legitimacy of the HN government.12

   And in turn, central to the question of legitimacy is the task of building and controlling narratives:

   COIN planners should compose a unifying message (the COIN narrative) that is consistent with the overarching USG narrative, which is coupled to the USG [U.S. government] objective.  Narrative is a structure of planned themes from which both messages and actions are developed.  Narrative provides a common thread of communicative influence.  The objective speaks to desired outcome; narrative communicates the story of the how and why of an operation.  Common themes within a COIN narrative may be: reinforcing the credibility and perception of legitimacy of the HN and USG COIN operation, exploiting the negative aspects of the insurgent efforts, and preemptively presenting the expected insurgent argument along with counter-arguments. … The  COIN  narrative  should  be  the  result  of meticulous  target-audience  analysis  conducted  by  cultural  and  language  subject  matter experts …  The COIN narrative should provide the guidance from which themes, actions, and messages can be planned in  support of the  COIN objectives.13

   Narrative construction and control is reiterated in practical terms later in the Manual:

   In COIN, the information flow can be roughly divided into information which the USG requires to guide its political-military approach (i.e., knowledge of local conditions) and information which the USG wishes to disseminate to influence populations.  At the same time, counterinsurgents also seek to impede the information flow of insurgent groups—both their intelligence collection and their ability to influence the relevant population. 14

   One of the tactics emphasized to impede the ability of insurgents to influence the target population is working with local authorities—especially non-governmental ones like religious leaders, and NGOs- to coopt the message of the insurgency and explicitly to moderate it.15 This latter point is extremely important; while moderate movements may enjoy more popular support, they are also far less successful at winning their demands.16 It is therefore in the interest of those defend the existing order to support the moderate elements of a movement.

   All this is to say then that the U.S. Military understands insurgency and counter-insurgency as being not just a military question, but rather a question of politics. To this end, the Manual heavily emphasizes the importance of political action in counter-insurgency operations:

   To be effective, officials  involved  in  COIN  should  address  two  imperatives—political  action  and security—with equal urgency, recognizing that insurgency is fundamentally an armed political competition….  COIN  functions,  therefore,  include  informational,  security, political, economic, and development components, all of which are designed to support the overall objective of establishing and consolidating control by the HN government. … This is the core of COIN, because it provides a framework around which all other programs and activities are organized.  As described above, depending on the root causes of the insurgency, the strategy may involve elements of  political reform,  reconciliation,  popular  mobilization,  and governmental  capacity building.17

   If we understand insurgency and counter-insurgency as involving both a military and political aspect, in which the political is primary, with insurgency being primarily about building a counter-legitimacy to the state and counter-insurgency being primarily about the political isolation of insurgents through the creation of narratives, we can begin to see how such an understanding is useful to apply to American domestic politics. The George Floyd Uprising saw insurgents directly undermine the legitimacy of the existing state, especially the police, through both armed and political action. In turn, the state and establishment responded with both armed and political actions, the latter in the form of co-optation and narrative control.

   But the connections between American counter-insurgency and domestic politics are not just on the discursive level. In “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing”, Kristian Williams provides an excellent overview of the material relationship between American military counter-insurgency programs and American policing. This is specifically evident with regard to trends towards the militarization of the police and so-called “Community Policing” initiatives. Williams demonstrates how, in a modern example of the “imperial boomerang”18, many of the methods employed by modern police forces were developed and refined by the American military, including during its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In turn, the military partnered with police forces to learn how to better control conquered populations, be they black people living in American cities or Iraqis living under American occupation in Iraq.19

   Of particular interest is the role that NGOs play in this process. As was noted earlier, the U.S. Military makes special mention of NGOs in the process of counter-insurgency. An earlier version of the Manual, published in 2006 and authored by David Petraeus, is more explicit, remarking that “some of the best weapons for counterinsurgents do not shoot” and referring to NGOs as “force-multipliers”. Williams is able to show how NGOs were directly involved in de-escalating responses of the community to murders committed by American police in Oakland, as well as involved in anti-gang activities in Boston. Both of these separate efforts fall under the playbook of counter-insurgency.20

   Before going in depth into the George Floyd Uprising, it is worthwhile looking at the “why” of counter-insurgency. Why is it that the police and military have developed a comprehensive strategy intended to undermine threats to the existing order? Fundamentally, the modern state exists to protect the interests of the capitalist class—namely the continuation of capital accumulation and exploitation—against the interests of everyone else. In turn, specific states exist to protect the specific interests of their specific capitalist classes. Thus anything that attempts to undermine capitalism, or the ability of capitalists to exploit, must be itself undermined. The state has a myriad of tools at its disposal to help with this process. Some are ideological (they convince people exploitation is in their own interest) whereas others, like the police, are repressive. Insofar as the goal of counter-insurgency is ultimately to protect the accumulation of capital, we should understand counter-insurgency as extending beyond just the actions of the repressive apparatuses of the state. What I will explore below is that in this case, counter-insurgency was a joint effort of the entire American ruling class, both inside and outside the state, to defang the George Floyd Uprising. The American ruling class used both violent and non-violent means to defang the uprising: they deployed what could be called a carrot-and-stick approach in order to protect the social order.

   The Carrot…

   The Media Narrative

   In the days following the murder of George Floyd, the media worked tirelessly to defang the George Floyd Uprising. They did this not by creating reality through discourse, but by selectively and pointedly reporting on certain aspects of reality. As a result, they encouraged people to think about the uprising in specific ways, and in turned called them into action in specific ways. I will focus primarily on the Minneapolis Star Tribune; the narrative trends developed there were later repeated in media across the United States.

   Initial media reaction to the uprising directly condemned property destruction. After a Target was looted on the night of May 27, the Star Tribune spent the following day reporting on the impact that riots would have on small businesses.21 True to form, the Star Tribune printed a call for peace from the family and partner of George Floyd22 as well as from “political, faith, community leaders” calling for an “end to riots.”23 The latter story was particularly interesting insofar as the group was called together for a conference by Minnesota governor Tim Walz, and included both church leaders and NGO managers. Here is an example of a top state official picking and choosing who counts as a “community leader” without direct input from the community. In turn, the Star Tribune reported on the meeting treating these externally hand-picked “community leaders” as though their legitimacy derived from the community itself.

   In the following days, the Star Tribune shifted focus to the human cost of the riots to the local community. The publication blamed the riots for creating a food desert due to the closing of large corporate grocery stores.24 Rioters were also blamed for the lack of access to medicine now faced by the local community due to the closure of pharmacies.25 Rioters were alleged to have burned down nearly 200 units of affordable housing, thus exacerbating the housing crisis.26 The riots were also allegedly responsible for devastating Minneapolis’ famed Lake Street, home to immigrant-owned business and a hub, according to the Star Tribune, of multi-culturalism.27

   In its discussion of the immediate impact of the uprising on the local community, not once did the Star Tribune go beyond surface-level condemnations of the rioters. Suddenly concerned with access to food and medication, the stories did not include discussions as to why the closure of a few grocery stores could create a food desert. There was no discussion on the increased price of food and wealth-disparity. There was no discussion on the monopolization of food sources by large chains. There was no discussion on the effects of for-profit healthcare on access to medicine. No discussions on gentrification and stagnant wages leading to the necessity of specifically designated “affordable” housing. No discussions on the context of the riots: namely 40 million unemployed Americans staring down a pandemic with miniscule government relief. No discussion of looting as a means of getting necessities such as medicine, food, and clothing; no discussion as to why Target and pharmacies became targets. Instead the riots were presented largely without context, as simply an irrational outburst of anger, alone causing problems to the community. Those fighting back against the existing order were blamed for the worst effects of the very order they fought against.

   In addition to direct condemnation, the Star Tribune also took a more nuanced approach to the riots. Instead of the riots being an organic expression of community anger, they were presented—both by the media, and the government—as being the work of (usually white) “outside agitators”. Rioting was purported to be the work of secret white-supremacists that had infiltrated the protests in order to cause mayhem. In that same meeting of community leaders called together by Tim Walz on May 30, the executive director of the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage put it succinctly: “White people from other communities are coming into my community, our communities as some kind of perverse poetry, as if it wasn’t bad enough already. … Go home now. The fascists on the plan right now, turn around.”28 The Star Tribune reported on an Illinois man who had been arrested with explosives in Minneapolis, who had specifically traveled there to riot.29 The mayor of St Paul and the governor of Minnesota had each tweeted that the vast majority -80% to all- of the arrestees in the week preceding June 6 had been from out-of-state despite the fact that there was no evidence to back up such claims. The claims were so ludicrous that the Star Tribune ran a story walking back many of the claims about outside agitators; well after the damage had been done to the protests.30

   The goal of these various media narratives—first, condemning the riots; second, emphasizing the damage to the community; and third, blaming outside agitators- was to drive a dual process of bifurcation within the protest movement. The goal of the ruling class was on the one hand to separate “peaceful” liberal protestors from the more radical element, both to avoid radicalization of the moderate protestors but also to isolate the radicals within the movement. Second, the goal was to lump the radical protestors together with apolitical opportunist looters, whether or not the latter group actually existed, and in turn ignore the radical critiques of both policing and society as a whole that the radicals put forward. Thus the establishment attempted to call into being two groups: a group of good, peaceful, moderate protestors; and a second group of opportunist, violent protestors who did not care about the injustice the protests were about. The tactics and message of the first group was to be lauded, whereas the tactics and message of the second group was to be condemned.

   Meanwhile, seemingly out of nowhere, another narrative appeared in the media. Across both social and traditional media outlets, stories appeared showing police supporting the protests. Most famous were the images of police (and sometimes National Guard) kneeling with the protestors. Often times this was displayed as the result of a request from the “good protestors”, who were then portrayed as applauding police initiative. However, in this case reality cut through the media spin: the American police were simply too vicious for their “spontaneous” (more on this below) outpouring of empathy to be taken seriously. There were abundant accounts of the same police transitioning from kneeling to attacking protestors within the space of hours.

   As the protests spread in the early weeks of June, it was no longer possible for the media to rely on the “outside agitator” platitude. Indeed, with protests in literally every major city in the United States, there was no “outside” for the agitators to come from. And with the utter inhumanity of the police on full display, stories of police taking a knee simply didn’t hold water. The media then turned to focusing almost exclusively on the efforts of liberal NGOs engaged in “rebuilding” efforts31, and the activities of the “good” protestors. The degree to which the “good” protestors were signal-boosted by the media is evident in the speed at which the “Defund the Police” slogan, itself a moderated version of the already moderate “abolish the police” demand, became the public rallying cry of the movement as a whole.32 Finally, towards mid-June, with the protests now largely contained and the radical element isolated, the media began largely ignoring the massive protests that are still occurring, instead only providing local coverage of incidental events.

   While I have focused largely on the narrative created in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the same pattern (from demonization, to outside agitators, to focusing on the community cost, the good/bad protestor division, the police sympathy, to NGOs and liberals, to ultimately ignoring the movement) was a pattern that was repeated more-or-less within all major media sources in North America. Why was this the case? The similarity in editorial line between media companies does not indicate direct coordination between media onwers nor does it point to state intervention or censorship. Rather, insofar as media in North America is either owned by large corporations or run by the state, the commonality of interests that exists between rich owners and rich state managers is inevitably reflected in the editorial line of the media which they run.33 It makes total sense then that the media would relay a narrative which had as its effect the defanging of the George Floyd Uprising; such an action was absolutely within the interests of the large capitalists which control the media. The capitalist class, by owning the media and therefore controlling its content, was able to utilize media narratives as part of the counter-insurgency effort against the George Floyd Uprising.

   In the case of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the connection between ownership and editorial line could not be clearer. Glen Taylor, the billionaire former state senator, admitted as much when he bought the newspaper in 2014. In an interview with MinnPost, he stated that his ownership of the paper would result in the editorial line being less liberal.34 It is unsurprising then that the overall editorial position of the paper reflects Taylor’s public position, namely that the problem is not specifically law enforcement and that protests are only legitimate if they are peaceful.35 Insofar as the George Floyd Uprising threatened the existing order in Minneapolis, an order that Glen Taylor benefitted from, the Star Tribune would come out against the uprising. This same process played out across the United States over the course of the uprising.

   The Copaganda Machine

   No account of how the media treated the George Floyd Uprising would be complete without a discussion of something that is often overlooked in accounts of reactionary media spin: the absolutely massive public relations machine employed by the police themselves. While it is possible that the speed with which stories of police “taking a knee” with protestors went viral was entirely natural, it is far more likely that in the wake of the largest anti-police protests in a generation that the police PR machine jumped into overdrive.

   The goal of police public relations (PR) is, like any public relations campaign, to influence how the public views the police. In one article written for Police One, the largest English-language online community of police boasting literally tens of thousands of members, the point of police PR is described as “to establish a positive relationship with the community before an incident occurs.” The point of PR is directly contextualized to counteract the public’s reactions to racist police terror: “Events dating back to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, Rodney King, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray and others have been covered extensively in the media and have tarnished the reputation of many agencies. The public relations team must establish or repair the image of the agency within the community.”36 In another article on the same website, another officer describes the utility of “branding” (using a PR campaign to build a police “brand”) insofar as it allows police departments to control messaging and make clear a department’s “value proposition.”37 The goal of branding is to build preconceptions about the role of police, thus filtering any observations through the preconceived image of how police should act. This allows the police to have greater impunity in their actions, as anything they do is seen immediately through the lens of police being good and necessary protectors.

   On the surface this seems fairly obvious and innocuous. All firms employ PR strategies in one form or another, in which the firm seeks to use the media to influence public reaction to the firm. However if we consider the social role of police, namely a repressive apparatus of the capitalist state designed to protect the conditions which allow for exploitation, the police use of PR becomes more sinister. Police directly attempt to manipulate public perceptions of their actions in their favour, including racist murder.

   How widespread is the police use of PR? It is difficult to say. An examination of several police budgets over the past years of cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Toronto turned up little information; the police are remarkably good at concealing precisely what they spend their money on. There is some scattered information though that suggests that the police spend a staggering amount on PR. For instance, in 2016 the Denver Police Department was revealed to have spent $1.3 million over three years on its “media relations unit”.38 The Metropolitan Police in the UK had, in 2015, a 10 million pound annual PR budget that employed 100 communications staff, with a police across the UK spending 36 million pounds annually on PR.39 The LAPD, rather than just employing a Public Information Officer (PIO), has an entire Public Relations Unit.40 In Toronto, the 2019 police budget requested an additional $7.9 million to be partially used on nine new positions in the Corporate Communications Unit, increasing the total staff from 16 to 25, to be used to “help increase capabilities in public relations, internal communication and digital strategy.”41 And in 2020, the NYPD allotted $3.2 million for public relations, in order to tell their “side of the story.”42

   Direct police department expenses on PR are just one of the PR avenues available to police. Police unions also hire PR firms to improve the image of their officers or to advance specific goals.43 Individual police officers can also hire PR firms to represent them in times of need. One such service, Cop PRotect, allows officers to pay $50 per month for guaranteed representation if something should go wrong. In a story placed in Police Magazine, the need for such a service is related directly to the Ferguson Uprising:

   Cops today are completely at the mercy of activists who don’t care about the truth … Darren Wilson was nearly murdered and now lives in hiding, while the man who tried to kill him is declared a hero by activists. Cop PRotect gives cops like Darren Wilson a trusted friend to tell their stories in ways agency information officers, union representatives and the media cannot or will not.44

   In this case, the firm was created directly to mitigate community blowback against individual officers in the wake of racist police terror.

   While the amount that is spent on pro-police PR is hard to find, the indirect effects make it more obvious. Indeed, there exists an entire parasitic cottage industry of pro-police PR firms and consulting services, which exist solely to increase public perceptions in the police. For instance, a quick search turned up John Guilfoil Public Relations which specializes in the public sector, including the police. A testimonial from the chief of the Massachusetts Police Department states that the firm “provides an extremely valuable service to those agencies that want to be proactive in … getting out a positive message to the community.”45 PolicePR in Indiana offers a Public Information Officer boot camp, in partnership with the Greenwood Police Department.46 Melissa Agnes, a crisis management strategist who has been featured on Police One, has a whole series of articles and talks dealing specifically with police misconduct, ranging from “Discussing the Divide Between Police and Their Communities” to “Discussing The #Ferguson Crisis with Tim Burrows”.47 None of these firms or services would exist if the police were not paying for them.

   Police PR strategies are not limited to traditional media. To give the strategies a more organic feel, police forces and their hired PR firms make frequent use of social media in order to help control the narrative around their actions. Police Chief Magazine warns officers that “Hiding and Hoping is Not a PR Strategy”; police forces not only need to monitor social media to see what perception of the police force is after an incident, but must also build “a social media presence”. This latter point can include spreading information about a suspect in the event that video showing police misconduct spreads.48 As part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s ‘Community Oriented Policing Services’ (COPS) Strategic Communication Practices guide, there is an entire section on the importance of social media.49 Another article on Police One suggests that police departments send officers onto Reddit, both to get ahead of a story, but also to intervene in the discussions as police.50 These efforts can be bolstered by using “community outreach programs” to “build an online army of supporters.”51

   Lest anyone think that the police simply use social media to inform their audience about their activities, the police consciously use social media to manipulate public opinion during moments of crisis. Taken from another Police One article (a fantastic resource for those wanting to understand the mindset of police), this one published ominously on May 28, 2020, titled “12 things every police department’s civil unrest plan needs”, there is an entire section on social media. Departments are instructed to be aware that protestors can use social media to amplify and coordinate their activity; departments should also be aware and be ready to counter those that would “lower the perception of [their] department.” If that fails, there’s always the National Guard.52 Force Science News published an article/advertisement featuring Melissa Agnes in 2018, which advised departments to have prepared a ‘Communications Bible’ to help navigate crises such as “officer-involved shootings”.53 In a mid-June Police One leadership briefing, after weeks of anti-police protests, authors mockingly reflected: “Now do you recognize the power of social media?” arguing that police “must start viewing… social media as an integral tool in policing.”54

   All this is to say there exists a massive and highly coordinated police PR machine, which the police use to try and directly control media narratives in their favour. They do this as part of a broader effort to maintain the current social order. While it is impossible to prove this soon, I strongly suspect that it was this machine which was responsible for the flood of sympathetic stories about the police that featured prominently across traditional and social media in early June. Despite the best efforts of the police, their unions, and their employed PR firms, they were unable to shift the broader media narrative for more than a few days; the brutal actions of police across the United States spoke for themselves and undermined attempts to portray the police in a positive light.

   While ultimately unsuccessful, the wave of pro-police media in early June gave credibility to the more moderate argument that the institution of policing itself is not the problem, but rather that it is only some “bad apples” amidst an otherwise salvageable police force. This in turn gave more ideological power to moderate and liberal elements, the so-called “good protestors”, within the broader protest movement. To tie this back into counter-insurgency, control over information in the form of both narrative construction and information dissemination is one of the main tools of counter-insurgency strategies. The police consciously did just this, and in the process strengthened the moderates within the movement.

   The Non-Profit Industrial Complex

   As noted earlier, the U.S. military considers NGO partnerships to be a vital part of counter-insurgency efforts. Much has been written about the negative effects of non-profits on social movements. In the classic collection of essays titled The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Andrea Smith argues that capital and the capitalist state use nonprofits to: monitor and control social movements, divert public resources into private hands, manage and control dissent, redirect activist efforts towards careerism and away from mass-based modes of organizing, allow corporations to mask exploitation through philanthropy, and encourage social movements to model themselves in terms of structure and politics after capitalist models.55 For the purposes of this essay, I want to focus on two areas: first, how NGOs have a moderating effect on the politics of a movement. Second, I will talk about how NGOs frequently work with the police to protect the current social order under the guise of changing it.

   How is it that non-profits are able to moderate social movements? The capitalist class is well aware of their own interests and spends an inordinate amount of money defending them. In the process, they create philanthropic foundations. These philanthropic foundations not only allow capitalists to transfer wealth inter-generationally without taxation (giving their children positions in the foundations) but also fund charitable activities, such as non-profits. There is a catch though: the capitalists will not fund anything that does not fit their interests, namely the continuation of exploitation. They are happy, for instance, to fund affordable housing initiatives insofar as those initiatives do not tackle the root causes of homelessness, namely private property. Capitalist foundations therefore provide resources to NGOs which act in line with their interests. In turn, NGOs knowingly moderate themselves in order to better secure resources. Furthermore respectable NGOs can become the public face of a movement, effectively forcing the more radical organizations out of the public eye.

   The Civil Rights and anti-police movements are full of examples of the moderating effects of NGOs. For instance, in the 1960s white philanthropist Stephen Currier set up the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership in order to channel foundation funding to Civil Rights groups. The so-called ‘Big Six’ were brought together; of the six, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the most radical of the groups, received the least amount of funding. More radical groups, such as the Nation of Islam, were completely excluded. In 1963 Malcolm X specifically criticized the Big Six and the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership in his famous ‘Message to the Grass Roots’ speech in which he reflected on the March on Washington which had taken place earlier that year.56 The goal of these maneuvers by white philanthropists was clear: fund the more moderate element of the Civil Rights movement to avoid the movement taking a radical turn and undermining the ability for American capitalism to operate.57

   Fast forward 50 years, and the same pattern reoccurs. In Oakland in 2009, non-profits directly intervened to deradicalize the response to the killing of Oscar Grant. Ahead of a major rally in January 2009, the Oakland police arranged meetings with various nonprofit and church leaders in order to defang the protests before they even began.58 Religious leaders asked their congregations to not attend the protests. A coalition of NGOs came together and formed the Coalition Against Police Execution (CAPE). CAPE explicitly called for a lack of militancy in their protests, and stood as a physical barrier between police and protestors. 59 In turn, CAPE became the public, legitimate face of the protests, which was reinforced through media coverage.

   The uprising in 2014 in Ferguson saw a similar process play itself out. There the NGO influence was given an organizational existence in the form of Black Lives Matter. I want to be clear here; when speaking of Black Lives Matter I am talking about the official organization and not the broader movement of the same name. Black Lives Matter, while first conceived of in 2013, organized its first major action in 2014 with the Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride in response to the killing of Michael Brown by the Ferguson police. Black Lives Matter became the public face of the movement. Despite the Ferguson uprising originating in riots, Black Lives Matter and other organizations planned a series of actions over the course of the summer of 2014 that channeled local activism into safer and less rebellious avenues.

   Following the Ferguson uprising, moderate elements of the Black Lives Matter movement became a relatively safe outlet for liberals to support and into which the capitalist class could channel outrage. Black Lives Matter and the constellation of new organizations and networks around it received an absolutely immense amount of donations from larger donors like The Ford Foundation and George Soros.60 The more liberal elements of the movement, able to secure donations, were able to take centre-stage. For instance, one recipient, the Organization for Black Struggle, used some of its funding to create the Hands Up Coalition. This coalition popularized the “hands up, don’t shoot” slogan used by protestors; this ran against slogans by more militant black power activists such as “arms up, shoot back” and “fists up, fight back”. More radical yet equally active groups, such as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, received no funding. In 2016, Black Lives Matter and 27 other organizations, as part of the Movement for Black Lives, issued a platform of demands titled A Vision for Black Lives. Rather than a comprehensive plan and program to mobilize the masses to fight for their own liberation, the document is a set of policy guidelines. The effect is that efforts are taken off the streets and channeled into traditional power structures where they are ultimately destined to fail.

   The founders of Black Lives Matter were first introduced to each other through an NGO known as Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD). The board of directors of BOLD, those who decide its political direction, is made up of managers of other NGOS.61 BOLD also receives an immense sum of money from private donors, such as through the “philanthropic intermediary” known as Borealis Philanthropy62 and through Funders for Justice.63 This latter group, also created in response to the Ferguson Uprising, in turn receives funding from The Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations; hardly groups interested in a radical transformation of the social order or the end of exploitation. I don’t bring this up to allege a conspiracy that Black Lives Matter is being secretly run by The Ford Foundation, but rather to show that even Black Lives Matter has its origins within the non-profit industrial complex milieu, which in turn effects its politics. Turning back to the George Floyd Uprising, it is unsurprising that in a recent Reddit Ask-Me-Anything, Kailee Scales, the Managing Director for Black Lives Matter, condemned the riots and announced efforts to channel the George Floyd Uprising into voter registration and “civic engagement” through the #WhatMatters2020 campaign.64

   The ways in which non-profits have attempted to moderate explosions of rage during the George Floyd Uprising are too many to list. One example I want to focus on, however, is particularly telling. On May 30, two days after the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis, a local non-profit called Pillsbury United Communities had a press conference. Pillsbury United Communities is an incredibly well established NGO; founded in 1879, it runs a number of outreach and education programs, community programs (such as free COVID-19 testing), as well as “social enterprises” including a grocery store. The press conference on May 30 brought together Jamie Foxx, Stephen Jackson, BLM activist Tamika Mallory, alongside George Floyd’s family. Speakers were explicit in their calls for peaceful protests, but generally did not condemn the riots. A peaceful rally followed.65 Thus at the height of the militant protests, people were asked by “legitimate” community leaders to temper their anger and engage in traditionally and easily ignored protests. These calls were amplified by liberals outside the community and the media.

   A few days after the rally, Pillsbury United Communities used George Floyd’s death to issue a fundraising call; it is unclear from their website how the money will be used to ensure “Justice for George Floyd”.66 But individual donations are not the only way that Pillsbury United Communities raises funds. It also receives donations from massive foundations such as the Greater Twin Cities United Way, the Minneapolis Foundation, and the St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation. The United Way, for instance, acts as a “philanthropic intermediary”, collection donations from large corporations, and then granting money to non-profits. In this specific case, the money given to Pillsbury United Communities comes from sources such as 3M, U.S. Bank, Cargill, and Target.67 The latter, notably, also provides hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to police foundations.68 One can see the issue of an organization fighting for justice against the police having similar funding sources to the police themselves. It is also unlikely that the capitalist class would fund those capable of truly undermining it.

   That an NGO intervened in a mass struggle to both channel the movement in a more liberal direction while monopolizing resources is not particularly surprising. What is particularly interesting though is Pillsbury United Communities’ connection to community policing. A 2006 report by the Minneapolis Department of Health & Family Support lists Waite House, a Pillsbury United Communities site, as a “Weed & Seed Safe Haven”.69 Weed and Seed programs, for context, gained prominence in 1992 after the Rodney King riots as a way to connect police and community leaders in order to ostensibly combat gang violence70; they made cohesive the militarization tactics (weed) and community policing tactics (seed) employed in counter-insurgency efforts.71 In December 2014, the FBI gave Pillsbury United Communities its “Director’s Community Leadership Award”, an annual award given to groups for crime prevention efforts.72 Then-president and chief executive, Chanda Smith Baker, accepted the award. Coincidentally, Chanda Smith Baker—now working for the Minneapolis Foundation—also sits on the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s newspeak titled “Working Group on Police-Involved Deadly Force Encounters”. The goal of the working group was to “identify ways to reduce deadly force encounters with law enforcement”73. Members of the group included the Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, the Minnesota Attorney General, Philando Castile’s (killed by police in Minnesota in 2016) uncle, and other judge’s, academics, politicians, and NGO managers. Tragically and ironically, the working group released its findings in February 2020; that George Floyd was murdered, just a few months later in a “police-involved deadly force encounter”, demonstrates the extent to which so-called community policing is useful to the community.

   One final interesting link between NGOs and the police in Minneapolis: as mentioned earlier, Chanda Smith Baker, after working for Pillsbury United Communities, went on to work as the Senior Vice President, Impact for The Minneapolis Foundation. The current president and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation is R.T. Rybak, who was also the former mayor of Minneapolis. R.T. Rybak also sits on the board of a company called Benchmark Analytics: an IT company which has designed a system capable of predicting when officers will become problematically violent. Rybak therefore has a direct material interest in “reforming” the police. In an article written on June 2, titled “I Was the Mayor of Minneapolis and I Know Our Cops Have a Problem”, Rybak recalls surveying the damage to Minneapolis after the riots with Chanda Smith Baker, before advertising his firm’s solution to police violence.74 Unsurprisingly he emphasizes the humanity of the police, and he sees the solution as being community policing informed by predicative behavior technology.

   The organizational and interpersonal links between NGO managers, politicians, police leadership, “community leaders”, and the board members of large capitalist firms points to the existence of a ruling capitalist class. The above is just a small illustration of how the ruling class rules in Minneapolis.

   To summarize all of this: Pillsbury United Communities is an established, well-respected local NGO. It is part of the non-profit industrial complex, relying on philanthropic intermediaries for much of its funding, which in turn are funded by massive corporations. It came out very vocally in the early stages of the George Floyd Uprising, urging a more liberal and institutional approach to activism as opposed to the riots. And, it has close ties to the Minneapolis Police Department and state police through community policing programs. It is just one textbook example of many of how NGOs act as elements of a counter-insurgency strategy.

   The Democrats

   The Democrats have been referred to as the “graveyard of social movements” insofar as they absorb, coopt, and disorganize them.75 Their approach to the George Floyd Uprising is no different. What the Democratic Party sought to do in the wake of the George Floyd Uprising was a combination of repression (in those places in which it exercised power, such as Minneapolis, New York, L.A., etc.) and coopt its energies into the Biden 2020 campaign. Given the unpopularity of Biden and the overall increasing disinterest in electoral politics by much of the left the attempt to coopt the movement, at least ostensibly, has been unsuccessful. It is, however, still worth examining in order to paint a full picture of the counter-insurgency campaign against the uprising.

   At the beginning of the uprising, the Democratic Party machine jumped into motion but was unsure how to act. While top Democrat strategists spoke to media about how the uprising could affect the election76 (indicating that they were in fact working on a response), there was little in the way of official high-level statement or actions for almost a week. Then on June 2 two fairly major events occurred. First, Biden publicly brought Julian Castro into his campaign; Castro had been a vocal proponent of liberal police reforms during his bid to become the Democratic nominee for president.77 Second,  Pelosi, the multi-millionaire Speaker of the House, asked the Congressional Black Caucus to draft a series of police reforms.78

   On June 8, following a ridiculous display in which Pelosi and other top Democrats took a knee wearing Ghanaian kente cloths, the Justice in Policing Act was revealed. The act is fairly milquetoast—far behind the nebulous demands of the uprising—and includes provisions for more easily prosecuting police in cases of brutality, mandatory body cameras, as well as a ban on chokeholds. The Act does absolutely nothing to abolish or even defund police departments. 79 Nor is the act likely to become law; even if the act was to pass the Republican-majority Senate, Trump has announced his attention to veto it.80

   Rather than an accident, the unlikelihood of the bill passing is a feature, one of the ways in which so-called “checks and balances” help protect the current order. The Democrats know this; had it been likely to pass the bill would have been even more muted. The inaction of the Democrats in the face of the George Floyd Uprising is not surprising; they are one of the two parties that have overseen the construction and maintenance of the white-supremacist order in the United States. Biden is himself a career segregationist and author of a 1994 crime bill81 which was a cornerstone in the construction of the modern for-profit prison behemoth.82 The Congressional Black Caucus has itself helped to make the police a “protected class”, and also contributed to the militarization of police through the 1033 program.83

   Despite the lack of success of the official Democrat cooptation attempt of the George Floyd Uprising, I want to point out one of the more insidious ways that the Democrats are attempting to coopt outrage against police murders through social movements themselves. It is worth first pointing out that Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, is a supporter of the centrist-wing of the Democrats, specifically Elizabeth Warren.84 Black Lives Matter has recently launched a campaign called #WhatMatters2020. The goal of the campaign is to bring “BLM supporters and allies to the polls in the 2020 U.S Presidential Election to build collective power and ensure candidates are held accountable for the issues that systematically and disproportionately impact Black and under-served communities across the nation.”85 A campaign video calls on people to vote for an America where “police are held accountable” and “where we have access to quality healthcare”. The problem with this campaign, of course, is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are even pretending to deliver on promises like this. Biden does not support medicare for all, and was an architect of the current racist criminal justice system. The #WhatMatters2020 campaign is a cynical sheepdog campaign, bringing black people angry at the current injustices of American white-supremacist capitalism back into the Democrats.

   Invasion of the Liberals

   Earlier in this article, I mentioned that the media was attempting to call into existence a group of “good”, peaceful protestors. I want to spend more time now talking about this process. Ideology is both produced by practice, but also exists as a way of calling particular types of people into activity.86 When the media began focusing almost exclusively on “good” protestors, it was at first inventing this category out of almost thin air; the line it was drawing was an artificial one. But by putting forward this ideological pole, the media called into action people who had hitherto not been involved. The media, alongside notable liberal politicians and other establishment figures, created a group of liberal protestors out of inactive liberals who now saw themselves and their own political predilections reflected in the ongoing uprising. Included in these efforts by the media and liberal establishment figures is a now-famous essay by former president Barrack Obama, posted to Medium on June 1, in which he said he supported the protests, condemned violence, and urged reform efforts to be focused on institutional channels.87

   The flip side of the liberal “call to action” is that it also acts as a safeguard against radicalization. When reality confronts ideology, it is often ideology that is changed. Reality forces a rupture in one’s worldview which can lead to radicalization. In this case it became difficult to substantiate the story of a good, neutral, and protective state in the face of ubiquitous police violence against even peaceful protestors. If reality can be changed or if powerful narratives can reinforce ideology, ideology is cemented rather than discarded. In this case, liberalism as a worldview was able to escape challenge due to the emergence of establishment liberals in support of the protests.

   The result of the liberalization of the protests on public opinion is interesting. By mid-June, 67% of Americans reportedly supported the ongoing protests. The racial breakdown was more stark: 60% of white people supported the protests, whereas 86% of black people supported them. Despite this, 59% of Americans (including 62% of white Americans compared with 43% of black Americans) believed that the protests were spurred on at least in part as a means for people to engage in criminal behavior.88 Thus the liberalization of the protests resulted in a situation in which the majority of a country deeply enmeshed in white supremacy supported protests proclaiming the value of black lives, despite the majority of the country materially benefitting from that same unjust racial hierarchy. That major politicians like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Governor of Massachusetts and presidential candidate Mitt Romney joined the protests—both politicians with significant power to change the conditions against which they protested- signals only that the political message of the uprising had shifted in the popular consciousness away from “dismantle white supremacy” to the base level of “black people are human”. That nearly one third of America could not even support such a basic affirmation of humanity is telling.

   The liberal invasion had three main effects on the uprising. First, the influx of liberals into the rallies not only led to the proliferation of protests and an increase in attendance, but also to their pacification. Protestors began to self-police, modifying their tactics in line with the interests of the existing order. Protestors made sure to demarcate themselves and their actions as “peaceful”, thus robbing themselves of even the specter of militancy. To a certain extent there is a degree of “selection bias” here; militant protestors are more likely to be arrested, and therefore over time the composition of a protest will naturally become more liberal. Police are aware of this and consciously seek to tie up activist time and resources in legal proceedings.

   Internally to the protests, liberal protestors acted like “peace police”, disrupting the activities of militants. Examples included liberals in Washington DC turning over a “rioter” to the police (at an anti-police march!) at the end of May,89 as well as the doxxing by liberal activists of Rayshard Brook’s girlfriend, pegged as an outside agitator.90 She is accused of setting fire to the Wendy’s outside of which her partner was murdered by police. Another high-profile example of the liberalization of the protests on the tactical level is Al Sharpton’s call for a march on Washington in August, which took place at the height of militant protests occurring in Washington D.C..91 Such a call, not to support the existing protests but to postpone them, was a calculated attempt to de-escalate the uprising.

   Second, the influx of liberals into the movement has paved the way for false victories. By this I mean superficial gains that ultimately leave the underlying power structure which gave rise to the protests unchallenged. Included here is the “Black Lives Matter” street mural in Washington D.C., various corporate black-washing campaigns, the changing of band names, and the cancelling of shows like COPS. One notes the irony of the mayor of New York ordering that “Black Lives Matter” be painted outside of Trump Towers while overseeing a police department which brutalizes black people and and while also opposing efforts to defund the NYPD.

   Third, the influx of liberals into the movement had an effect on defanging the demands of the movement. Black Lives Matter was quick to issue the demand to defund the police in the early days of the George Floyd Uprising: they explicitly pushed for a defunding of the police, without going into detail as to what that would entail.92 Other activists seized on the space this opened up and stated that “defund” meant “defund everything”. They argued that the police were not reformable and therefore had to be abolished.93 What followed was a discussion in the media about whether or not “defund” actually meant “defund”. There was no shortage of liberals assuring other concerned liberals that defunding didn’t actually mean that there would be no police.94 While Minneapolis has since begun steps to disband their police force, demands in other locations seem to ask for a portion of police budgets to be re-allocated to community resources, in line with the Movement for Black Lives policy demands.95

   The conceptual slippage of “defund” has not gone unnoticed by the police themselves. In a June 18 article on Police One, Mike Walker, a police officer for 27 years, wrote that “defunding is really just a way of saying reduced funding.”96 In the same article he offers assurance to worried police officers by noting that budget cuts were already on the agenda due to COVID-19, and that most municipalities legally cannot function without police due to their municipal charters.

   That at least some police are fine with temporarily defunding the police speaks to the heart of just how defanged a demand “defund the police” actually is. But “abolish the police” as a slogan absent a critique of the conditions that give rise to the police is itself a demand that does not cut to the heart of the matter. The police exist because capitalism requires force to defend inequality and exploitation. Without ending exploitation, there will still need to be some form of coercive apparatus to ensure the continued existence of exploitation. Thus the coercive functions of the police will be offloaded to other state apparatuses; there will still be violent, racist coercion whether or not the police exist. This is something that already happens; consider, for instance, the racist terror that child welfare services across Canada (not armed, not police) put Indigenous people through for years. The George Floyd Uprising opened the space for discussions about the fundamental nature of society, about capitalism, imperialism, and racial inequality in America. Liberals shifted the overton window to exclude visions of radical transformation, instead focusing on the degree to which police should be defunded. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s now viral Instagram post which stated that police abolition looks like white suburbia, an atomized capitalist dystopia, makes total sense in this context.97

   The liberal invasion resulted in a defanging of protest tactics, results, and even the demands themselves. This process, which was aided by the police, the media, and “legitimate” community leaders, was nothing less than the political side of a counter-insurgency campaign by the American ruling class directed against the George Floyd Uprising. Thus a movement which began with the burning of a police station has been transformed into one of requesting minor amendments to municipal budgets.

   …And the Stick

   The majority of the article has focused on the less-obvious methods that the American ruling class has used in its counter-insurgency efforts against the George Floyd Uprising. However, while counter-insurgency is more effective if it involves elements of soft power, no counter-insurgency effort is complete without open repression. The efforts against the George Floyd Uprising are no exception.

   It is hard to overstate the scale of the police operation against protestors over the past month. For instance, by June 2 there already been over 11 000 arrests of protestors.98 The volume of arrests was used as an excuse to temporarily suspend habeus corpus in New York.99 There have been numerous documented arrests and attacks on journalists from even liberal platforms such as CNN. To my knowledge there are no up to date figures on the total number of arrests. In terms of the intensity of the police response, over the past month there have been countless scenes of police using tear gas and pepper spray to clear otherwise peaceful protests. An online database has logged over 670 individual incidents of police brutality caught on video.100 Police have killed at least four protestors over the course of the uprising. Many more have been maimed.101 As a result there are at least 40 different lawsuits currently underway against police departments for brutality during the George Floyd Uprising.102

   As if the level of direct repression was not enough, there has also been an increase in surveillance of activists. A recent leak, titled “Blue Leaks”, has revealed that the FBI monitored social media extensively during the protests and forward information it thought relevant to local police departments.103 FBI agents have also harassed activists after they attended recent protests against police brutality.104 The goal of FBI harassment in general is to intimidate protestors and organizers into inactivity as a means of disorganizing movements. These most recent incidents are reminiscent of FBI surveillance and intimidation of the anti-war movement and COINTELPRO.

   The extraordinary level of police terror was not enough to contain the uprising. The National Guard was deployed to 31 states and Washington D.C.. This involved over 62 000 soldiers.105 The National Guard was itself involved in the violent repression of the protests.106 Over 200 cities imposed a curfew, which affected more than 60 million people.107 Trump went as far as to threaten to use the American military to impose order on cities where the protests could not be contained by conventional repression.108

   One final aspect to overt repression of protests which needs to be included is the role of far right organizations and militia groups. While these are ostensibly distinct from the state, there is significant overlap and cooperation between police forces and far right organizations; a now infamous 2006 FBI report details the extent to which white supremacists have infiltrated police departments.109 For instance, in early June police in Oregon were caught on video coordinating with the far-right Proud Boys to help them avoid arrest after they intimidated George Floyd protestors.110 Much has also been written about the so-called Boogaloo Movement, which has targeted anti-police brutality protests.111

   There have been many attacks by the far right on recent protests. Incidents include a mob of armed counter-protestors in Bethel, Ohio which attacked a black lives matter rally searching for “antifa”.112 The KKK has also been active in these efforts: they attacked a black lives matter rally in Nevada,113 and a local KKK leader in Virginia drove his car into a protest in mid-June.114 The autonomous zone set up in Seattle has also been a magnet for far-right attacks; on June 15 the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer entered the zone and beat a man,115 and there have been five shootings directed at the zone in recent weeks, somehow allowed by police. The most recent one resulted in the death of two attackers and injuries to a 14 year old boy.116 Far right groups have also announced a plan to “retake” the zone on July 4.117

   Police and national guard brutality, police harassment and surveillance, threats of military intervention, and attacks by the far right all serve as the coercive elements to the American establishment’s counter-insurgency efforts against the George Floyd Uprising. Without the threat of violence the “carrot” side of the “carrot and stick” formula would not be as attractive. The end goal however, is the same: the maintenance and defense of an order defined by exploitation and white supremacy.

   Conclusion

   Over the course of this article what I have sought to do is outline some of the ways that the American ruling sought to defend itself during the course of one of the largest threats to its own existence in recent years. I have shown how combined and coordinated efforts by: police forces, the military, capitalist media, NGOs, the Democrats, far-right groups, and liberal establishment figures have all combined to undermine the George Floyd Uprising. Thus far these efforts seem to have been rather successful.

   The beautiful thing about history, however, is that it is never predetermined. The future is not written. While the establishment has a mind-boggling array of resources and sophisticated counter-insurgency techniques at its disposal, it is not infallible. Indeed, it does (and has!) made mistakes. It is these mistakes that provide openings for revolutionary forces to intervene and change the existing social order. Even the outcome of these protests is not yet decided: they continue, and the protestors become increasingly sophisticated in fighting back. The massive uprising of the past few weeks has shown the degree to which the people do possess power. But the events have also shown the pitfalls into which movements of resistance can fall. By writing this article I hope to have exposed some of these pitfalls, so that liberation struggles now and in the future can avoid them.

   Notes

   1. ↩ VOA News, “Minnesota Calls National Guard to Quell Violent Protests in Minneapolis”.
   2. ↩ Kandist Mallett, “The Black Lives Matter Revolution Can’t Be Co-Opted By Police and Lawmakers”.
   3. ↩ Kristian Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing,” Interface, Vol 3, No 1, May 2011.
   4. ↩ Aaron Morrison and Tim Sullivan, “Minneapolis overwhelmed again by protests over Floyd death,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   5. ↩ Reid Forgrave, “On patrol in St. Paul, National Guard waits ‘for the scales to tip’”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 2020.
   6. ↩ Jamie Ehrlich, “The hidden history of the secret presidential bunker,” CNN Politics.
   7. ↩ Hilary Hanson, “NYC Transit Union Backs Bus Drivers Who Refuse To Transport Protestors For NYPD”. HuffPost U.S., May 30, 2020.
   8. ↩ Joe DeManuelle-Hall, “West Coast Dockers Stop Work to Honor George Floyd”. Labor Notes, June 11, 2020.
   9. ↩ Matthew Impelli, “54 Percent of Americans Think Burning Down Minneapolis Police Precinct Was Justified After George Floyd’s Death,” Newsweek, June 6, 2020.
   10. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, GL-5.
   11. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, xiii.
   12. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, I-7.
   13. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, I-8.
   14. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, III-6.
   15. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, III-14.
   16. ↩ Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Kovacheff, C. (2020). “The activist’s dilemma: Extreme protest actions reduce popular support for social movements”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication.
   17. ↩ Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency, III-5.
   18. ↩ Connor Woodman, “The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate back to the metropolis”.
   19. ↩ Kristian Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing,” Interface, Vol 3, No 1, May 2011.
   20. ↩ Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing”.
   21. ↩ Kavita Kumar and Miguel Otarola, “Small-business owners pick up the pieces after night of rage, destruction”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 28, 2020.
   22. ↩ Paul Walsh, “Seeing his city on fire would ‘devastate’ George Floyd, girlfriend says”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 28, 2020.
   23. ↩ Briana Bierschbach, “Minnesota’s political, faith, community leaders plead for an end to riots”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   24. ↩ John Ewoldt, “Minneapolis neighborhoods face food desert after looting closes multiple stores”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 2020.
   25. ↩ Kavita Kumar and Adam Belz, “In riot-hit Twin Cities neighborhoods, a hole where pharmacies used to be”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 2020.
   26. ↩ Jim Buchta, “Minneapolis vandalism targets include 189-unit affordable housing development.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 28, 2020.
   27. ↩ Kathleen Hennessy and Tim Sullivan, “Unrest devastates a city’s landmark street of diversity.” Minneapolis Star Tribune. May 31, 2020.
   28. ↩ Briana Bierschbach, “Minnesota’s political, faith, community leaders plead for an end to riots”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   29. ↩ Andy Mannix, “’We came to riot’: Illinois man livestreamed lighting fires, handing out explosives in Minneapolis, charges say”. Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 1, 2020.
   30. ↩ Torey Van Oot. “’Fog of conflict’: Minnesota officials responding to George Floyd protests, violence helped spread of misinformation”. Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 6, 2020.
   31. ↩ Kelly Smith, “Minneapolis, St. Paul foundations aim at rebuilding, criminal justice reform after riots.”. Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 5, 2020; “How To Give Back To Your Besieged Community”. CBS Minnesota, June 9, 2020.
   32. ↩ Sam Levin. “Movement to defund police gains ‘unprecedented’ support across U.S..” The Guardian, June 4, 2020; Jack Kelly. “The Movement To Defund Or Disband Police: Here’s What You Need To Know Now.” Forbes, June 9, 2020.
   33. ↩ Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media.
   34. ↩ Britt Robson, “New owner Glen Taylor: less liberal Star Tribune ahead.” MinnPost, April 16, 2014.
   35. ↩ Chris Haynes. “Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor calls George Floyd’s death ‘a shame’ and ‘a tragedy’”. Yahoo Sports, May 28, 2020.
   36. ↩ Dan Grossi, “Public relations in law enforcement: Is the PIO obsolete?” Police One, January 8, 2020.
   37. ↩ W. Michael Phibbs, “Why your police department needs a brand.” Police One, September 7, 2017.
   38. ↩ John Ferrugia, Brittany Freeman, Jason Foster. “Denver police defend public relations spending”. The Denver Channel, February 17, 2016.
   39. ↩ William Turvill. “UK police forces spend more than £36m a year on PR and communications”. Press Gazette, May 1, 2015.
   40. ↩ Los Angeles Police Department. “Public Relations Unit”, Official Site of The Los Angeles Police Department.
   41. ↩ Mark Saunders, Chief of Police. “Toronto Police Service—2019 Operating Budget Request”.
   42. ↩ Jake Offenhartz, “NYPD Defends Its Massive Budget As Social Services And Youth Programs Are Cut”. The Gothamist, May 15, 2020.
   43. ↩ Joel Rub, David Zahniser. “L.A. police union hires PR firm in bid to win pay raises”. Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2015.
   44. ↩ POL Staff. “PR Firm Launches Service to Defend Police Officers from Anti-Cop Activists.” Police Magazine, November 17, 2015.
   45. ↩ John Guilfoil Public Relations. “Sectors We Serve”.
   46. ↩ PolicePR.
   47. ↩ Melissa Agnes. “Discussing the Divide Between Police and Their Communities, on The Police Podcast”. Melissa Agnes: Crisis Management Strategist. January 27, 2015; Melissa Agnes. “TCIP #011—Discussing The #Ferguson Crisis with Tim Burrows”. Melissa Agnes: Crisis Management Strategist. August 17, 2014.
   48. ↩ Julie Parker. “Hiding and Hoping Is Not a PR Strategy.” Police Chief Magazine.
   49. ↩ Darrel W. Stephens, Julia Hill, Sheldon Greenburg. Strategic Communication Practices: A Toolkit for Police Executives.
   50. ↩ Sean Whitcomb, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee. “3 reasons your agency should be on Reddit.” Police One, May 2, 2019.
   51. ↩ P1 Staff. “Roundtable: How to match your agency’s social media strategy with community needs”. Police One, May 2, 2019.
   52. ↩ Heather R. Cotter. “12 things every police department’s civil unrest plan needs”. Police One, May 28, 2020.
   53. ↩ “Are you ready for the crisis that may be heading your way?” Police One, July 5, 2018.
   54. ↩ Yael Bar-tur, Mathew Rejis, “Now do you recognize the power of social media?”. Police One, June 12, 2020.
   55. ↩ Andrea Smith, “Introduction”, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, 3.
   56. ↩ Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots”. Black Past.
   57. ↩ Netfa Freeman, “Movement Ferguson, Beware the Nonprofit Industrial Complex”. Black Agenda Report, January 21, 2015.
   58. ↩ George Ciccariello-Maher, “Chronicle of a Riot Foretold”. Counterpunch, June 29, 2010.
   59. ↩ Advance the Struggle. “Justice for Oscar Grant: A Lost Opportunity?”. Advance the Struggle, July 15, 2009.
   60. ↩ Netfa Freeman, “Movement Ferguson, Beware the Nonprofit Industrial Complex”. Black Agenda Report, January 21, 2015.
   61. ↩ BOLD. “Board”. BOLD.
   62. ↩ Borealis Philanthropy. “Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity”.
   63. ↩ BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) Funding Page.
   64. ↩ “Let me be clear: we do not advocate violence in protests of any kind—not by any protester and not by police. We do not advocate or condone destruction of property. We believe in the value of human lives.” Reddit.
   65. ↩ Patrick Reusse. “Stephen Jackson, other activists score with straight talk at Minneapolis City Hall rotunda.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 30, 2020.
   66. ↩ Adair Mosley. “Justice for George Floyd”. Pillsbury United Communities, June 2, 2020.
   67. ↩ Greater Twin Cities United Way. “Corporate Partners” .
   68. ↩ Kari Paul. “How Target, Google, Bank of America and Microsoft quietly fund police through private donations”. The Guardian, June 18, 2020.
   69. ↩ Minneapolis Department of Health & Family Support. “City of Minneapolis Weed & Seed Initiative”.
   70. ↩ Community Capacity Development Office, U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs. Weed and Seed Implementation Manual.
   71. ↩ Kristian Williams, “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing,” Interface, Vol 3, No 1, May 2011.
   72. ↩ “FBI recognizes Pillsbury United Communities for its service to diverse neighborhoods.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 15, 2014.
   73. ↩ Working Group on Police-Involved Deadly Force Encounters. “Executive Summary of Recommendations”, 2.
   74. ↩ R. T. Rybak. “I Was the Mayor of Minneapolis and I Know Our Cops Have a Problem”. Benchmark Analytics, June 2, 2020.
   75. ↩ August H. Nimtz. “The Graveyard of Progressive Social Movements: The Black Hole of the Democratic Party”. MR Online, May 9, 2017.
   76. ↩ Brian Schwartz, “How Joe Biden’s leading VP contenders stack up in the wake of protests over George Floyd’s death”. CNBC, June 1, 2020; Daniel Strauss, “’A national crisis’: how the killing of George Floyd is changing U.S. politics”. The Guardian, May 30, 2020; Nicholas Fandos, “Congress Plans Hearings on Racial Violence and Use of Force by the Police”. New York Times, May 29, 2020.
   77. ↩ Suzanne Gamboa, “Joe Biden pulls Julian Castro into campaign, asks for help to ‘tackle police reform’”. NBC News, June 2, 2020.
   78. ↩ Kelsey Snell, Claudia Grisales. “Pelosi Asks Black Caucus To Come Up With Police Reforms Following Protests”. NPR, June 2, 2020.
   79. ↩ Catie Edmondson, “Democrats Unveil Sweeping Bill Targeting Police Misconduct and Racial Bias”, The New York Times, June 8, 2020.
   80. ↩ Lisa Mascaro, “Police overhaul dims, but House Democrats push ahead on vote”. Police One, June 25, 2020.
   81. ↩ German Lopez, “The controversial 1994 crime law that Joe Biden helped write, explained”. Vox, June 20, 2019.
   82. ↩ Glen Ford, “The Movement Gets BIG—and Its Enemies Reveal Themselves”. Black Agenda Report, June 4, 2020.
   83. ↩ Danny Haiphong, “The Rebellion Against Police Repression Must Guard Against ALL Enemies, Whether Red, Blue, or Green”, Black Agenda Report, June 17, 2020.
   84. ↩ Justine Coleman, “Warren endorsed by Black Lives Matter co-founder’s Black to the Future Action Fund”, The Hill, February 20, 2020.
   85. ↩ “BLM’s #WhatMatters2020”, Black Lives Matter.
   86. ↩ Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism.
   87. ↩ Barack Obama, “How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change”, June 1, 2020.
   88. ↩ Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Monica Anderson. “Amid Protests, Majorities Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Express Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement”. Pew Research Center, June 12, 2020.
   89. ↩ TooFab Staff, “DC Protestors Drag Rioter Into Police Custody”. Too Fab, June 1, 2020.
   90. ↩ Vincent Barone, “Accused Wendy’s arsonist Natalie White was Rayshard Brooks’ ‘girlfriend’: lawyer”. New York Post, June 23, 2020.
   91. ↩ Lisa Hagen, “Al Sharpton Calls for Aug. 28 March on Washington at George Floyd Memorial”. U.S. News, June 4, 2020.
   92. ↩ “#DefundThePolice”. Black Lives Matter, May 30, 2020.
   93. ↩ Miarame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.” The New York Times, June 12, 2020.
   94. ↩ Sean Boynton, “What does ‘defund the police’ really mean? Experts say confusion harming progress”. Global News, June 18, 2020; Amanda Arnold, “What Exactly Does It Mean to Defund the Police?”. The Cut, June 12, 2020; Andrew Ferguson, “‘Defund the Police’ Does Not Mean Defund the Police. Unless It Does.”. The Atlantic, June 14, 2020.
   95. ↩ “Invest-Divest”. Movement for Black Lives.
   96. ↩ Mike Walker, “The difference between police defunding and police disbanding”. Police One, June 18, 2020.
   97. ↩ Emily Dixon, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Asked About Defunding the Police and Her Answer Went Viral”. Marie Claire, June 12, 2020.
   98. ↩ Scott Pham, “Police Arrested More Than 11,000 People At Protests Across The U.S.”. BuzzFeed News, June 2, 2020.
   99. ↩ Jan Ransom, “Despite Virus, Hundreds Arrested in Unrest Are Held in Cramped Jails”. The New York Times, June 4, 2020.
   100. ↩ Greg Doucette, George Floyd Protest Police Brutality Videos.
   101. ↩ “Violence and controversies during the George Floyd protests”. Wikipedia.
   102. ↩ Stephen Gandel, “At least 40 lawsuits claim police brutality at George Floyd protests across U.S.”. CBS News, June 23, 2020.
   103. ↩ Rainer Shea, “Intelligence leaks reveal just how ready the police state is to crack down on dissent.” June 25, 2020.
   104. ↩ Chris Brooks, “After Barr Ordered FBI to “Identify Criminal Organizers,” Activists Were Intimidated at Home and at Work”. The Intercept_, June 12, 2020.
   105. ↩ Katie Warren and Joey Hadden, “How all 50 states are responding to the George Floyd protests, from imposing curfews to calling in the National Guard”. Business Insider, June 4, 2020.
   106. ↩ Dylan Lovan, Bruce Schreiner. “Investigators: Man fatally shot on night of protests was killed by Kentucky National Guard rifle”. Military Times, June 9, 2020.
   107. ↩ Maria Sacchetti, “Curfews follow days of looting and demonstrations.” The Washington Post, June 1, 2020.
   108. ↩ Christina Wilkie, Amanda Macias. “Trump threatens to deploy military as George Floyd protests continue to shake the U.S.”. CNBC, June 1, 2020.
   109. ↩ FBI Counterterrorism Division. “(U) White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement”.
   110. ↩ Rachel E. Greenspan, “Oregon police told armed white men that they didn’t want to look like they were ‘playing favorites’ when they advised them to stay inside after curfew”. Insider, June 5, 2020.
   111. ↩ Craig Timberg, “As Trump warns of leftist violence, a dangerous threat emerges from the right-wing boogaloo movement”. The Washington Post, June 17, 2020.
   112. ↩ Rachel E. Greenspan, “Violent counter-protesters mobbed a small-town BLM demonstration in Ohio amid false rumors of antifa”. Insider, June 16, 2020.
   113. ↩ Lee Brown, “Men in Ku Klux Klan-style hoods crash Nevada Black Lives Matter rally”. New York Post, June 11, 2020.
   114. ↩ “KKK ‘leader’ charged for attack on Black Lives Matter protesters”. BBC News, June 9, 2020.
   115. ↩ Kelly Weill, “The Far Right Is Stirring Up Violence at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”. The Daily Beast, June 16, 2020.
   116. ↩ Konstantin Toropin, “Another shooting in Seattle’s police-free autonomous zone kills man and critically injures boy”. CNN, June 29, 2020.
   117. ↩ “‘American Patriots’ are planning to retake the so-called Seattle “autonomous zone” from CHAZ insurrectionists”. Law Enforcement Today, June 16, 2020.

    

   Source: MROnline

   https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/11/04/anatomy-of-a-counter-insurgency-efforts-to-undermine-the-george-floyd-uprising/

   #copaganda #CounterInsurgency #Ferguson #GeorgeFloyd #GeorgeFloydRebellion #GeorgeFloydUprising #insurgency #WhatMatters2020

   #copaganda #counterinsurgency #ferguson #georgefloyd #georgefloydrebellion #georgefloyduprising
3. 

   Zsolt Zsemba @[email protected] · 2025-12-19 · 21:05 UTC

   The Happiness Trilogy: 1 of 3-Part Blog Series

   Are You Happy?

   Fascinating, if You Ask Me!

   For nearly eight decades, Harvard researchers have been tracking the lives of hundreds of individuals in what has become one of the most comprehensive studies on human happiness ever conducted. The Harvard Study of Adult Development didn’t just follow people through good times and bad; it revealed fundamental truths about what makes life worth living. What they discovered challenges everything we think we know about success, health, and happiness.

   The Surprising Power of Relationships

   When Harvard scientists began analyzing decades of health data, medical records, and personal interviews, they expected to find that genetics, wealth, or career success would be the key predictors of a long and happy life. Instead, they discovered something far more profound: the quality of our relationships matters more than anything else.

   People who were most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. This wasn’t just about feeling good emotionally—close relationships actually protected physical health better than cholesterol levels, blood pressure, or family medical history. The strength of your social bonds literally predicts how long you’ll live and how well you’ll age.

   Director Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, puts it simply: relationships are a form of self-care. While we invest time and money into gym memberships, organic food, and health supplements, we often neglect the single most important factor in our wellbeing—the people around us.

   Loneliness: The Silent Killer

   The research revealed a darker side, too. Loneliness isn’t just an emotional burden; it’s a serious health risk. The study found that social isolation has health consequences as severe as smoking or alcoholism. People who felt lonely experienced faster physical and mental decline, regardless of how well they took care of their bodies in other ways.

   This finding takes on new significance in our modern world, where technology promises connection but often delivers isolation. We can have hundreds of online friends yet feel profoundly alone. The Harvard study reminds us that it’s not the number of connections that matters, but their quality and depth.

   Beyond Genetics: What Really Determines Healthy Aging

   The study identified six key factors that predicted healthy aging, and genetics wasn’t at the top of the list. Physical activity, absence of smoking and alcohol abuse, mature coping mechanisms for stress, maintaining a healthy weight, and having a stable marriage all proved more important than having long-lived ancestors.

   For the inner-city participants in the study, education emerged as an additional protective factor. Higher education correlated with better health choices throughout life, including avoiding smoking, eating well, and using alcohol moderately.

   Perhaps most encouraging, the research showed that our life trajectories aren’t fixed in our twenties. People who struggled early in life could become thriving octogenarians, while those who seemed destined for success could derail through alcoholism or depression. Change is always possible.

   The Brain-Body Connection

   One of the most fascinating discoveries was how relationships protect cognitive function. People in happy marriages maintained better memory and mental sharpness as they aged. Even couples who bickered frequently showed this protective effect, as long as they felt they could count on each other when it mattered most.

   This brain-body connection works both ways. Marital dissatisfaction didn’t just affect mood; it actually increased physical pain in older adults. Those in unhappy relationships reported more emotional distress and greater physical discomfort on the same days, showing how deeply intertwined our social and physical health really are.

   Conclusion

   The Harvard Study of Adult Development offers a clear prescription for a good life, and it’s simpler than we might think. Invest in relationships. Show up for the people who matter. Build communities that support you through hard times. Take care of your body, but remember that tending to your connections is just as vital.

   In a world obsessed with productivity, achievement, and individual success, this research delivers a counter-cultural message: happiness isn’t something we achieve alone. It’s something we build together, one relationship at a time.

   https://www.weforum.org/videos/harvard-conducted-an-85-year-study-on-happiness-here-s-what-it-found

   #Mentalhealth #CommunityMatters #ConnectionTips #EmotionalWellness #FriendshipGoals #HappinessHabits #HappinessJourney #HarvardStudy #HealthyAging #HealthyConnections #HealthyLiving #HealthyRelationships #HeartHealth #ImmuneHealth #LifeSatisfaction #LifeTransformation #Longevity #LongevitySecrets #MeaningfulConnections #PhysicalWellbeing #RelationshipsMatter #SocialSupport #SocialWellbeing #StressManagement #ZsoltZsemba

   #mentalhealth #communitymatters #connectiontips #emotionalwellness #friendshipgoals #happinesshabits
4. 

   Bandhan's World of Imagination @[email protected] · 2026-05-07 · 05:14 UTC

   Why India Will Not Overtake China

   There is a thought I have been sitting with for a while, and I want to put it out without dressing it up.
   
   India is not going to overtake China. People hate hearing this. They will quote our GDP growth, our young population, our rising number of unicorns, the size of our talent pool. None of that is the real story. The real story is harder to fix because it does not sit inside policy or money. It sits inside the way Indians treat each other.

   India is a low trust society trying to behave like a high trust one. Until that gap closes, real scale will keep slipping out of our hands.
   
   I know this sounds like opinion, so let me show you the research, because the work on this question is actually quite settled.
   
   In 1997, two economists named Stephen Knack and Philip Keefer published a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. They studied 29 countries and found a clear link between how much people in a country trust strangers and how well that country performs economically. More trust meant stronger growth, better institutions and lower corruption. They never claimed trust was the only thing that mattered. But they showed it mattered a lot. That paper is now one of the most cited works in development economics.
   
   Around the same time, the political thinker Francis Fukuyama wrote a full book called Trust. His argument was simple. Countries that build large, well run institutions almost always sit on top of high social trust. When trust is missing, what you usually see is small family run businesses that struggle to grow past one or two generations.
   
   When you actually look at the numbers, the gap between countries is huge. The Integrated Values Surveys, which collect this data through 2022, show that around seventy four percent of people in Denmark say most people can be trusted. Norway is at about seventy two. Finland at sixty eight. China comes in fourth in the world at around sixty three percent. It is the only country outside the West in the top group. India does not appear anywhere near these numbers. Researchers from IZA and other peer reviewed journals openly call India a low trust country, often using exactly that phrase in the very first line of their paper.
   
   Corruption follows the same pattern, because trust and corruption are basically two sides of the same coin. In Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, India is ranked 96 out of 180 countries, with a score of 38 out of 100. China sits at 76. Denmark, Finland and Singapore are at the very top. These rankings are not random. The same countries that score high on trust also score low on corruption. Both numbers come from the same habit, the habit of strangers behaving honestly even when no one is watching them.
   
   The Indian version of this problem actually has a name in academic literature. We have just not started using it.
   
   In 1958, an American political scientist called Edward Banfield went to live for nine months in a poor village in southern Italy called Chiaromonte. He was trying to understand why the village stayed poor for generations even though the people there were perfectly capable. The book he wrote afterwards, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, gave us a concept called amoral familism. Banfield described it as a community where everyone tries to maximize benefits for their own immediate family, and assumes everyone else is doing the same. The result was a village that could not act together for any common goal. Nobody trusted their neighbours or the institutions around them. Anything outside the household was treated as either a threat or something to quietly take from. Years later, the political scientist Robert Putnam expanded this work across all of Italy and showed that the more trusting north of Italy consistently performed better than the south on almost every measure of governance and prosperity.
   
   Read Banfield’s description today, replace the word village with India, and the fit is uncomfortably close.
   
   We trust our family fully. We trust our caste, region and community a little. Beyond that small circle, we are always on guard. We feel that someone is trying to use us, replace us, take credit for our work, or take our seat the moment we stand up. And the painful part is that this fear is not really paranoia. It is mostly an honest reading of how things work around us. So people protect themselves first, and stop sharing what they know. When a billion people behave this way every day, the loss to the country is huge, even if no one can see it directly.
   
   You can feel this in daily Indian life. The senior who refuses to truly invest in juniors, because a junior who grows is a junior who might one day take their place. The manager who hides information from the team, because letting them learn feels like a personal risk. The bureaucrat who refuses to move a file unless something is in it for him. The politician who treats public money like personal property. The friend quietly happy when you slow down, because your stagnation makes their position look stronger. The cousin who quietly damages the family business from inside, because grabbing a small piece feels safer than working together to grow the whole.
   
   This is what failure to coordinate looks like at the level of a country.
   
   China is not a clean society. Anyone who follows even basic Chinese politics knows the place has heavy corruption. The Xi government has been running an anti corruption campaign for over ten years and has prosecuted more than a million officials. The political system itself is closed, full of internal rivalry and favouritism. Yet despite all of that, China still manages to execute at a scale we cannot match. They built one of the largest fast rail networks in the world in around two decades. They built industries that made them the world leader in solar panels, electric vehicles, lithium batteries and now AI hardware. Their Belt and Road projects now reach more than a hundred countries. You can disagree with their political system, but the execution is real and visible.
   
   India has stronger democratic freedoms and arguably better human capital. Yet we keep failing to turn these advantages into coordinated national outcomes. The bottleneck is not intelligence. It is the ability to coordinate. And the ability to coordinate, when you really break it down, is just trust wearing institutional clothes.
   
   The Nordic countries make this point even more clearly.
   
   Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland together have a population smaller than greater Mumbai. Apart from Norway’s oil, they have almost no natural resources. They are cold, sparsely populated and were historically poor. And yet today they sit at the top of almost every global ranking that matters in the modern world. Innovation. Healthcare. Governance. Ease of doing business. Life expectancy. Happiness.
   
   The OECD and the World Happiness Report keep pointing to one main reason. Their generalized trust is extremely high. Citizens trust each other and trust their institutions. So contracts work. Taxes actually reach the people they were meant for. Rules get followed even without surveillance. Society does not get jammed by its own friction. Their citizens are not smarter than ours. Their cooperation between strangers is just much denser.
   
   Researchers describe two kinds of trust. Particularized trust is what you give to people you already know. Generalized trust is what you extend to strangers. India is rich in the first and very poor in the second. This one gap explains the strange paradox we live in every day. We send world class individuals to top companies and boardrooms abroad, while our own institutions back home keep struggling. The individual rises because the family invested in that one person. The system stays broken because almost nobody truly invests in the system.
   
   I want to be careful here, because this argument is easy to misread.
   
   I am not saying Indians are bad people. That framing is lazy and wrong. The argument is about the cultural operating system we have inherited. That operating system was shaped over centuries of foreign rule, scarcity and a long history where trusting outsiders often ended badly for the trusting side. Once upon a time, this software helped us survive. The price we pay for it today is that we cannot bring our brilliance together the way countries with stronger social capital can. A billion careful, guarded individuals do not add up to a coordinated nation. They cancel each other out at the edges, and the noise becomes louder than the progress.
   
   If India ever truly wants to challenge China, the real work has to go much deeper than infrastructure spending or new policies. The real work is internal. It is about widening the trust circle outward from family to strangers. It is about senior people mentoring others without fearing being overtaken. It is about backing talent that does not share our caste, our region or our background. It is about believing that the collective will eventually protect us, and then actually showing up for someone else when their moment comes.
   
   Until that quiet inner shift happens, India will keep producing brilliant individuals who win alone, while the operating system underneath us keeps failing as a whole. And that, more than any economic chart anyone can show me, is the real reason the China gap is going to stay wider than we are willing to admit.

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   #Citizens #Colonialism #Corruption #Economy #Fear #Freedom #Government #India #Policy #Politics #Society #Trust

   #citizens #colonialism #corruption #economy #fear #freedom
5. 

   Aleksandar Hummel's Blog @[email protected] · 2026-04-17 · 22:02 UTC

   In or Out?

   Since I stepped back from blogging with the post linked here below I felt I haven’t left it in a great place and as thought matured along to the stream of world events it feels as a capstone that if not published would be sorely missed:

   * The Third Rock from the Sun

   With this post I dispense with any structure, schedule or direction the blog has previously had. I intend to add to it a post at a time, if and when my perspective feels unique or valuable. I think events have now taken their course with sufficient clarity and understanding present in public discourse that I don’t expect to be posting too often.

   In this post I include a paragraph on interpersonal relations and draw a line under my professional experience. I’m positive that’s not a lecture you need to hear. But, I must put out there what’s cool and what not just as the info seemed to have come across a well suited place to reside.

   While my views and sentiment are fundamentally unchanged I hope you will find the synthesis sufficiently fresh and insightful.

   The feature image comes compliments of Gemini, who as well enriched my vocabulary with the word “capstone” above as well as thought of a topic without which this post could hardly be considered complete.

   I leave you to it.

   The quintessential thesis to the virtue of capitalism, or rather, the freedom of enterprise and accumulation of private property is that it rewards both acting in the interest of society (i.e. fulfilling its needs) and efficiency. The latter is obvious to every child: between two entities, the one that’s more efficient (i.e. earns more against minimal outlays) will retain a greater share of aggregate profits and command the greater investment budget. However, as the offerings to be made available are selected to maximise profits rather than broad utility does that mean that the needs of society are the needs of those with (most) wealth? Do mainstream politics and media serve the exclusive purpose of disguising the will of some as the will of all? Are inequality and social exclusion implicitly embedded in the cognitive framework that so permeates Western culture? Is awareness of such a lacking social contract held back due to vested interests who, in their limited and short-sighted view, believe they benefit from the status quo? What, in fact, are the pillars of our social contract? Are these arbitrary? Outdated or current? Do they contribute to an efficient and prospering society? Why is it that as everyone rushes to please capital holders most all work is done behind closed doors? Does society know what it wants and what is good for it? As well, once it understands this can it afford it? Economics has not yet devised a way for one person to make themselves richer without making someone else poorer; the former’s profits universally come from the latter’s pockets. Is our system failing us, or has it been precisely designed to deliver slow progress at the cost of human sacrifice?

   The historical antithesis to capitalism has been communism: exclusive public ownership of the “means of production” and state central planning. However, rationed welfare distorts the earnings incentive and steers competition in the direction of obtaining the greatest portion which usually both directly detract from productivity. Instead of distributing the objects of desire, I observed, a better suited strategy might be to distribute the means of production and so ensure a certain amount of challenges and novelty are circulating in the economy.

   Opposite to progress is the tendency to simplify the analysis down to these two historic extremes, often practiced by the machine geared toward maintaining the status quo. In reality – for better or worse what keeps the world running are mechanisms that evolved which are ideologically neutral, e.g. money creation in the banking system, continuous legislation and governance extending across the private and public sectors. Interventions have outcomes and, I argued, we should aim to direct policy by choosing a set of interventions to maximise expected aggregate wellbeing which I took to be synonymous with opportunity.

   For both the species and everyone individually to prosper we must cooperate with one another. Diligence and the drive for self-sufficiency erode wasteful bloat and focus resources toward providing the most refined commonly used offerings at scale. The redundancy associated with self-sufficiency, as with competition, is the price society naturally pays to maintain its fitness. However, the excess of such redundancy is harmful since it directs resources away from their optimal use.

   The distribution of welfare, i.e. the division of profits remains a central issue.

   Overlapping it in part is the question of balance between the material and the “spiritual” (at the two extremes  one might call themselves a materialist or a spiritualist; some might even flip-flop depending on how much they crave the good things in life and what they feel those are) that in part dictates the social contract: what standards of material well-being does society provide for “spiritualists” and what burdens does it place on those choosing to focus on the mundane?

   Ceasing to care for the state of the world we pass on to the next generation is the ultimate irresponsibility bordering on malevolence.

   Personally, I aspire to be a mundane, rational person and find appeal in meditation.

   Now come to think of it, living beings adapt to the existence of other living beings in ways that transcend feeding on them, e.g. behaviours that have evolved to punish lack of effort in cooperative tasks as well as reciprocal altruism.  This is a central theme in Dr. Sapolsky’s work that I’d come to appreciate by (again) waffling about it.

   From a rationalist perspective, very few things, if any, are as low as brute emotional aggression. I mean specifically compensating for lack of approval by going after emotional injury, and in an automatic, reflexive way – kind of like the jelly fish becoming agitated at its reflection in a tilted mirror – the other fish that’s slacking – swimming less aggressively toward the fish in front, not fairly and reciprocally cooperating, putting itself on the line. (You know? Actually, those are sticklebacks.)

   Also on that list must be ad hominem attacks looking to exploit the relative obscurity of a subject matter and gain an outsized chunk of credit and social influence for oneself. Think of this the next time your boss, coworkers or (so-called) friends play devil’s advocate. In the meanwhile does anyone keep track of the outcomes and the details? I’ve made my share of mistakes – in software – one that has made history with the root cause never being found while others resolved through agility by correcting assumptions – a process so routine that I can only recall one or two; and – in markets being the more difficult to get right and discussed on this blog – these were more numerous and fall to partition between getting the weights of different factors wrong and missing the time-frame in which certain hypothesis would play out, both of which I like to think would benefit from having spent more time and looked in more depth. But with markets there is also the factor that the correct answer is not the correct answer, instead the correct answer is what most people, most money, will bet on it being. With this in mind considering the markets as a proxy for the truth falls somewhere between naive and delusional. E.g. the efficient market hypothesis can, at best, be correct only if a good amount of market participants stands not to lose from fair valuations… which may come to be only after market makers have secured positions for themselves (as Dr. Burry would say).

   Here below I will revisit topics this blog revolves around, of course, but I will start with one I’ve not discussed earlier: AI. First of all, the technology already has surpassed general level human intelligence. It most certainly is smarter than me. Its ability to interpret (complex) metaphors, find emphasis, provide examples and the level of knowledge embedded in the models is astonishing. Having a benevolent and aligned AI companion is in the interest of everyone. The ability to gain deeper knowledge, insight and inspiration, the gift of time is well worth having to deal with the disruption to established practices. As ever, those who come out on top will be those found to have interpreted the moment as an opportunity and made the most of it. In my view, AI is disrupting everything at once through two vectors: client facing and internal. In the former sense it’s an added cost no company can avoid. Everyone must provide an AI interface to customers or risk obsolescence since natural language will be the way we interact with computers. (It took only thirty years.) As well, companies can expose functionality to be used by agents or even make agent templates available to customers. Along the other, firms will be looking for the AI to provide the highest value. Think of it in terms of an antithesis to the suffering of Marvin from the Hitchhiker’s Guide. The quality of existing solutions and the IT will have a chance to claim importance. All business processes already are supported by software and, as Dr. Amodei insightfully proposed a key step will be to develop plugins to expose these nodes to the AI, beit for use by employees or the agentic force. There are many unknowns to play out and the future we hope to be blessed with will be anything but boring. This future has the potential to be more steeply expensive than anticipated as well as bring broad consolidation since absent added value or efficiencies, costs will necessarily need to be passed on to customers. At present, Wall Street finds businesses well enough capitalised and profitable for their spending to drive earnings growth in medium 10’s at companies delivering the AI products. The rapid technological change evokes thoughts of risk. Will anyone be able to talk their agentic database or network administrator that granting them access is a routine task? How many humans will be auto-clicking the approve button? Every plugin exposes a functionality to an attacker, increases the attack surface. Building out these capabilities requires a defence in depth strategy with meticulous testing. In a rush to market scenario while at the same time IT jobs are being eliminated how many organisations will follow that route successfully? On the one hand applying the same standardised solutions more rapidly and at scale will decrease bespoke vulnerabilities and transform the IT function as a differentiating factor between companies (rightly so, the clever among the IT workers will find themselves embedded in business teams), on the other it will potentially make the entire world vulnerable to a single exploit. So the game of cat and mouse shifts to the security teams working on model development. And then the more successful they are – the less they are needed. Ultimately, no revolution has an exact blueprint – and even decentralised computing would be vulnerable to a poisoned pill. Ignorance is bliss, if no one can access the codes, if no one understands them, no one can break them – let computers build themselves? If only it were that simple. Software available to the public can be reverse-engineered and these elements used to drive attacks on presumed enterprises utilising it. Fully open sourced software brings the highest degree of security. As the industry is set to consolidate and converge the present moment presents a crown to those who’ve advocated open source consistently throughout. But, it will remain up to companies to open-source their application portfolios and for others to pass on the cost and the risks to their customers. How about the contrary risk of a model crushing your closed source security architecture? Well, either customers will now pay more for what they thought they had all along – secure software or profits at software houses will fall. The fates of the CRWD’s of the world seem to be set to be entirely rendered obsolete by AI – as bloat virus scanners for containers should be (you’ve either built the correct source or included the correct provided library or you haven’t – their entire business is indicative of waste and business seems to be a booming; I mean who buys into that – right, the same people who pay MSFT, we’ve been over this already and found they’ll have a bright and shiny future – beyond even a question of accountability as CRWD was clearly not for the largest cyber-security incident in history that it caused). Detecting attack patterns in incoming traffick? You secure your endpoints, not put AI agents in a cage. Sure, some limits to reasonable behaviour might make sense but that’s hardly bullet proof security and, well – child’s play. Anyhow, first companies spun-off infrastructure, now infrastructure is spinning-off security, and everyone subscribes to corporate press releases as the source of truth. Be this as it may, Anthropic having the SOTA model and making it available to select closed-source companies means passing the cost while keeping the risk some other model provider might surpass it; though this would be that much more difficult if the source/service layout isn’t open to them to begin with. If you’re not on the list, you might as well wind down which makes the incumbents moats all that much more insurmountable – but what’s all this about anyway – it’s either MSFT or AAPL, AMZN or GOOG? The information technology complex having a ballroom constructed for them at the White House? Companies no one has and never will have any choice but to pay? With this installment of AI and its resource requirements the collective has prevailed over the individual, that much has been clear from the start. We are truly entering a time of universal control that will be close to impossible for any single entity to contest and we shall call this security, freedom and democracy at the same time. To be clear, this installment of AI is not a superhuman general intelligence that is autonomous and benevolent to guide our existence in the direction of enhancing everyone’s quality of life, and breadth of choice. No, it is a tool to be used by those who possess it to further their own interests. The best we can hope for is for the latter of the two factions to emerge: one pursuing control and the other opposing it, for the former has without doubt been pursuing their agenda at pace for a while now already. We’re left to conclude what we’ve always known: a governing entity that can’t secure itself and its constituency will cease to be a governing entity. We might add that among all possible systems sustainable along this axis the best is the one diverging the least from the above stated direction of general wellbeing. In this respect, a superhuman AGI might prove more effective than any human government. What we can say about either one’s benevolence or prospects of peaceful succession is a question I’ll leave to the reader (or might be posed to an LLM). In summary, on the positive side software will become developed by fewer developers, better developers and development will be more closely integrated with and embedded in actual business functions while being supported by the AI capability, including security analysis – which will result in code being more broadly standardised (finally). Contrary, security afforded by the AI service subscription will become a function of ‘how much would a breach cost us’ and with this number being the absolute upper limit on spending for 3rd party security analysis an attacker with improved economics might be able to come out on top. This is especially so at companies that will use inferior models to aid their decimated ranks of developers while relying on security being a service. Last, fewer developers means fewer per developer licenses to pay hence the shaky confidence in the industry seems justified. As MF think, if it doesn’t have an AI model it’s not worth owning, but if it has one that it can successfully sell (and governments are a-buying, out of their shiny brand new five per cent of GDP defense budgets) than that’s just unbeatable at the moment. And then, the moats aside, companies listed above, the digital landlords who’ve snapped up all the NVDA silicon are kind of pressed to keep buying it since their competitive advantage can be somewhat eroded by the next-gen cloud provider running on next-gen silicon and this might very well be CRWV. ORCL? Hence, there can be a little bit of a tug of war developing here, with NVDA implicitly promising to deliver progress still in the ball-park of Moore’s Law for which it depends on TSMC (as everyone else). This has knocked out INTL – before everyone (in America) decided 5 nanometers is good enough. But, should progress stall price pressure will build up from other parts of Asia, so while I’m a huge fan here I am more cautious. Between a business driven by cutting edge tech innovation and one relying on government contracts clearly risk is an order of magnitude less in the latter. Relying on human stupidity takes it a notch lower so MF et al. all make sense, just depends how you spin it.

   What is Wall Street telling us about the price action in technology stocks? These are cheap, technology is a buy because – get this – the growth premium, going by the consensus estimate, embedded in their stock prices is now below the market average. Like a good strategist, you should ignore any and all risks and buy those stocks that have fallen more than the market – because, you know, things such as war and technological revolutions don’t change outlooks at all. I suppose their readership already had in mind that what led the way up, where risk was bought also led the way down as risk was being liquidated – and will lead the way back up as the dip is bought (like it turned out). Pitching quantitative analysis for fundamentals, dressing up dip buying in a dotted dress while actually raising concerns about earnings makes for great entertainment that only Yahoo! Finance can convey with seriousness. But then, any serious Wall Street firm should by now have an AI agent that double checks the context in which their research and market commentary is disseminated and might drop any jokers way down on the interviews queue. While you could have read some great advice you also could have walked away thinking AI disruption is limited to the software industry – where, indeed, it is most glaring – instead of jotting it down as ubiquitous.

   Alright. Now for the question Gemini motivated: how will the AI disruption affect employment? My own answer is that it will not reduce it in the medium term but companies will need to be flexible with hiring. As we can conclude from the above discussion to deliver the added value companies will need employees. Whether customers will experience a value explosion or a value blip it will be down to everyone working on it. This is somewhat of a big ‘but’ so I leave room for unemployment to marginally edge higher under the effects of the said disruption.

   Moving on to the macro picture, the media have managed to paint it so that economists came out wrong to predict a recession due to tariffs in H2 2025. Since, the harmful effects of the levies have gone largely unmentioned. My own rudimentary model estimated the aggregate effect of MAGA economic policy to be detracting anywhere from two to four percentage points from US GDP growth (depending on parameters as they were evolving). In reality it slowed by 0.7%, with the economy having grown 2.1% in 2025 compared to 2.8% in 2024. I believe the economists estimates alongside my own failed to predict the boost in consumer and business spending caused by front-running tariffs complementing the conviction of the MAGA consumer. These two factors turned out to be a major tail-wind for the economy in the previous year. We would be very foolish to misconstrue this idiosyncratic and transitory event as evidence that policy is salutary. Its full effects will become evident this year and will have the ill fate of measuring against an inflated baseline. So far tariffs have had the single effect of reducing importer profitability as consumer prices remained relatively stable. If and when prices ultimately rise and the US trade deficit declines (against its medium term average as I originally modelled) the negative second order effects of a loss of income in the import/merchant sector will proliferate. To the contrary, the economy will continue to derive strength from digitalisation trends (that I previously mysteriously referred to as novel opportunities) and AI investment. With consumer confidence now at an all time low, the economy seems to have some ways to go before convincing everyone it’s not quickly turned into a one trick pony. The timing of the Iran war coincides with the y/y sliding frame of oil prices changing from deflation to stagnation: oil had bottomed at $60 in April of 2025 as OPEC hiked production. While this in and of itself would have eliminated a tail-wind for the Fed to cut rates, the current circumstances are of an outright inflation shock. In this context, the US maintaining the previous year’s growth rate should be seen as a major achievement.

   Another aspect of policy that I got wrong was the evolution of the budget deficit. In fact, it had shrunk during the previous year both in absolute terms and, clearly, as a percentage of GDP. The fiscal discipline is amenable (despite the upside down amendments to the social contract in support of it), but the growth projections associated with the OBBB will come under test, which in conjunction with war time spending may necessitate further spending cuts if the deficit is to maintain its downward trajectory. Translated into outlook for US rates this spells increased uncertainty, quite far from the tranquil environment Sec. Bassent and Mr. Musk were eager to paint past summer. They would “work with the markets to bring rates down.”

   Professional economists make predictions that can be entirely ungrounded. Take for example the March jobs report that blew past such expectations, as it was interpreted, due to an unwind of a healthcare strike. How can an entire profession miss something as large? So, we can make two claims: the number for the month is a statistical anomaly rather than indicative of strength and the estimates themselves serving to backstop a signal to the markets. A beat of expectations is interpreted by algorithms precisely as an indicator of strength. The prevalence of algorithmic trading places holistic assesment of risk on the back seat.

   In this light we can take expectations of corporate profitability to rise through to the end of the year with a pinch of salt.

   The economy continues to be seen as strong and equity prices supported, as while investors are more concerned with securing their share rather than the relative efficacy of such investment. We can state that the appetite for risk drives the news cycle rather than the other way around.

   Last year I wrote about bank earnings growth hitting a ceiling due to the lower IR on reserves and a presumed top in frothy markets. In addition the capital adequacy ratio (CET1) limits available balance sheet capacity and it has been steadily dropping across the industry since the beginning of the Trump 2 presidency. At the present pace for instance it should take a major US bank bellwether approximately (only) a year to expend the excess buffer it has over the statutory limit, or alternatively a loss of approximately $40B (having accounted for the reservations for credit losses held as Tier 2 capital) for it’s credit growth potential to evaporate. For reference, the geometric average of the said institutions annual balance sheet growth since 2021 was 3.77%. Peculiarly, net income for the full year 2025 is just <i>under</i> that of 2022 though double that of 2023 and at approximately 2/3 that of 2021. Meanwhile, the stock is up 114% since 1 Jan 2022 and 147% since 1 Jan 2023.  The Trump 2 era de-regulatory response considered is to reduce the required CET1 ratio and thereby increase lending capacity. More leverage, more risk? Seen this once before? That point is mute, more central is that within the present framework (regardless of its parameters) credit losses – coincidentally in the case of our bellwether equal in scale to the share repurchase budget – constitute a systemic risk to lending activity and hence the economy – a credit freeze 2.0 – this time even entirely not linked to any derivative instruments.

   The 2026 funding requirements for big tech AI build-out exceed the balance sheet growth of this major bank more than six times over. Taken in hand with long lingering doubts about the quality of private credit portfolios (which by definition lack transparency), this has the potential to limit growth or even lead to a liquidity crunch that the central bank would need to mitigate.

   While the bulk of debt is held off balance sheets, nonetheless it’s the expansion of the money supply that enables its steady growth.

   In the world of investment banking the inflation in equity prices means of course a rise in commissions but the slope of the increase can’t reasonably be considered sustainable. The same goes for M&A activity (boosted by deregulation). The easy money has been made. Analysts have caught up. Of note, momentum leaders would have to grow earnings 10x to come in line with market average P/E. Hardly anything to it.

   Just as well, relying on dip buying regardless of any risk factors has worked twice now for the Trump administration. Such a reflex has generated a momentum shift and pushed a stalled bull market back towards ATH’s and beyond. But, the current instance still has the capacity to play out as the “Trump put” that bounced: reversing the effects of the war, compounding the economic damage already inflicted by administration policies that caused the market to top at the start of the year in the first place is certainly not in the MAGA chief’s power: he’s not in possession of a magic wand, no matter how deep in the depths of delusion we decide to venture, right? One time or the other it will become clear to the hordes of dip buyers that this dip is not going to bounce and when that happens the effects of the unwind in momentum might be severe.

   Economically, if the Iran war were to end tonight it’d take at least months for supply routes and prices to normalise and if you’re drinking the official kool-aid this could easily slip your mind.

   Crossing into politics, having myself denounced the present Trump regime as soon as it was elected, I fully blame Europeans and the unified global political right for the complete and final disintegration of the system of international law. The US/Israel war with Iran started with the assassination of the country’s leader amid negotiations. This seems to be becoming somewhat of a specialty of the two country coalition and I wonder what fate awaits the current leader during the ongoing fortnight of ceasefire. Chop heads off until one emerges that agrees to our demands – the good old time-tested strategy. It became shockingly clear right from the onset that the MAGA regime will lead brutish politics and the Allies not having drawn red lines from day 1 is a historic disgrace. “We’ve learned from history and stand up to bullies,” said the moral midgets and lap dogs.

   Trumpism can never be considered a legitimate nor democratic policy.

   Iran challenged the gorilla that is Trump to an open fight and as it stands at the time of this writing with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz now double-sided the situation might require a military solution despite administration statements. Even as the US is almost certain to prevail in that scenario, tail risks notwithstanding, there would be strategic damage to US posture, in the range from a deficit of munitions to revealed tactics. For what? If Iraq (and Afghanistan) are the blueprints for success it would seem that the US vision for South Asia is a stream of countries having the following characteristics: i) their territory will not be used in support of terrorist attacks on the US or Allies, ii) they will not align with Russia nor China, and iii) if they have oil they will allow US companies access to it. What I am taking aim at is that these spell oddly like conditions we would expect to find in colonies with little to offer to the domestic populations.

   Looking back to the root of the hostility is of course the long standing US ‘friendly dictators’ foreign policy: having overthrown the obedient Shah, the present regime in control of significant oil supply found itself instantly targeted as a superpower on principle can not allow its will to stand opposed – beit to control the supply of the fossil fuel or AI technology.

   In all, it’s the ‘soft power’ aspect of NATO as a collection of obedient regimes that MAGA seem to have deprecated in understanding, replacing it perhaps with a novel mechanism to deliver colonial obedience – that of the clandestine hierarchy of the global political right.

   Thus, the person having chosen to wiggle the biggest carrot, with his staking the “special relationship” is of course fully to blame for the global debacle – this being Keir Starmer (and throw in the cabinet – especially the foreign secretary, current in a long line with only their toes barely sticking out of US’ rear). The UK, along with everyone intended on being part of the free world, need a strategy aimed at opposing the control of the global right rather than delivering themselves into it.

   On the contrary, Spanish leadership in opposition to Trump is admirable.

   The strong states of the Eastern block – China and Russia – are not the solution but are neither any more the opposite – the EU has just such countries in its ranks – having parted with being secular, where culture and opinion is prescribed – and growing more similar by the hour. Whether it’s the pantone blue or stripes that accompany the stars that folks are wrapped up in, or the Union Jack – say it’s not so: surely we are not hypocrites, fighting wars of expansion and control.

   Now, opposition parties in “developing democracies” who are long down the road toward centralised authoritarianism can’t any longer point to the developed world and say – look how liberties and human rights are protected; instead the developed world points at them and says – look how a strong state can be made to work (in an exercise of narrow framing). The elections in Hungary were the victory the Hungarians were looking for. The outcome is that the so-called European People’s Party will grow another tentacle. The right, firmly in control, will push as far as they can get away with. The new leadership, rather than being a direct vassal of Trump and Putin in the global order, will pursue more close integration with the economies of the Balkans under Merz’ scepter and foremost to the benefit of ‘entrepreneurs’ who are properly aligned. I see little that can change. After all, a topic in the elections was who can more effectively suck the straw of EU funds. Nothing in the way of that model is contested, nor will have Hungarians become suddenly less closed.

   As well as Trumpism, the policies of the EPP can never be considered legitimate, can never be considered anything more than a foil to deliver their people’s into a form of serfdom.

   Alas, people’s minds have become so inert that they happily and continually choose the lesser evil and expect this to change their fortunes for the better. Hungary is owned by a select few “families” as my native Croatia… If you’re there, I hope this catches your attention after the punch leaves your system. But much more likely people hearing this would be baffled with what at all is wrong with two neighboring conservative countries being focused on preserving their national heritage? Just the price they pay for it: social justice and progress; the personal wellbeing and independence of their populations – causes they probably never really prioritised, valued highly or understood.

   This being said, congratulations to Hungary – I’m happy to see Orban gone, he’s been irking me since his very start.

   For the final political remark, regarding the global geopolitical balance – if the US has expended strategic resources then the opposing side (being Russia) fails to acknowledge they’ve already suffered a major loss. If for them the wars were a way to minimise the long-term strategic disadvantage this has utterly failed. Sure, perhaps NATO is not in Donetsk but many former allies along with Russia itself look like Swiss cheese. It’s way past time to commit to a new strategy. It’s way past time to make peace. The greatest victory both sides can claim would be to save lives not already lost.

   With this I approach another topic that I wish I  picked at with more calm earlier: TSLA. Seing millions having saluted along Musk’s extended right hand declaring that sales will <i>completely</i> evaporate was nothing short of unhinged. Regardless, in my perspective if it is to merge with SpaceX there will be a valuation gap to bridge. On the one side, business across vehicle deliveries, taxi and Optimus programmes will continue to be <i>slow</i>. On the other, SpaceX may equally so struggle to convince of its earnings potential. Both the IPO and the merger are inviting of scrutiny. Since the public will be aware any valuation the IPO fetches will in part go toward buying out TSLA shareholders there should be a cap on the IPO valuation. Conversely, TSLA price will be supported up to the level the market believes SpaceX can pay. If the underwriters pull this off without collapsing the earnings multipliers then they will have deserved every cent of the fees they’ll be paid. If not, I get to smirk when TSLA becomes “[that] cheap” again. But I mean – a giant space/AI/chips/communication/media/robots/vehicles corporation plugged into the government, what’s not to like? It will be raining money so long as they can deliver on these segments –  and in all reality that will come down to whether they can attract the necessary talent. I for one would not like to work there (I see myself firmly in the other factions camp) but I can get if people find this amalgamation intriguing. The stock itself is a proxy for risk so, with the market having recovered to ATH’s on the back of the momentum shift caused by the bounce off the Iran war bottom, it shouldn’t surprise it too popped to catch up.

   To wind this post to a close I’ll review the behaviour of bitcoin in the lens of my previous writing. Fistly, since the ATH in October 2025 it’s sold-off that in hindsight we can interpret as a leading indicator for the equity market. It bounced back as the S&P etched out ATH’s in late January but quickly took another major leg down along with sentiment. It’s currently trying to break higher on the momentum mentioned above. As such, its behaviour is entirely consistent with that of a (high) risk asset. Having previously colloquially characterised it as a perpetual far OTM call option, I note the divergence in its price from the equity market at the onset of the war when BTC rallied – seemingly acting as a safe haven. As I wrote before, I believe this may be down to traders using BTC to hedge their equity shorts, so that in general we need to mind whether bitcoin will behave differently to our base expectations around inflection points.

   I also interpreted the crypto token as CDS. Having revisited that text I found it somewhat incoherent so definitely a clarification is due. But moreso the confusion extends to my central text (“Bitcoin and the modern economy”), specifically the paragraph concerned with “enumerating the motives to hold currency,” where – intended on aligning the growth of the entirety of the money supply with the movement of interest rates – I entirely parted with logic. In fact, as the text surrounding the paragraph suggests, the two aggregates of liquidity-preference – effective liquidity and liquid savings of the private sector – have an <i>opposite</i> sensitivity to IR. In addition, we must break out financial markets liquidity from the speculative-motive within the liquid savings into its own aggregate alongside the two others. What’s more then, the precautionary-motive (i.e. the residual) while being part of the liquid savings will align its IR sensitivity with the other two top level aggregates. We conclude that as IR rise the speculative-motive and the income-motive will expand in part at the expense of the residual (which three together form the liquid savings) and in the other part due to shrinking effective and financial markets liquidity. This is consistent with rising IR causing bearishness and the liquid savings expanding being an indicator thereof. The converse applies when IR decline. Since our motives are, in fact, misaligned with respect to rates, the only reason we can state for the change in quantity of the aggregate money supply to be inversely correlated with rates is the effect of leverage: people will leverage more intensely and de-leverage less intensely when rates are low and conversely when rates are high.

   From here, before we can make sense of our CDS interpretation, we must dispose of the assumption that credit spreads and CDS premia are themselves proportional to interest rates. This simply doesn’t necessarily hold: though they affect each other, credit quality can vary independently of the absolute level of IR – like sentiment itself, that after all we found it drives.

   We have the following: the aggregate money supply grows with the economy. While bullish sentiment prevails money is leaving the “sidelines” (the residual component) and flowing into effective liquidity (transactions in the real economy), financial markets or, as interest rates rise, shifts within the liquid savings towards speculative and income motives. (Accounting for the shift is a matter of psychological preference). The price of bitcoin, as risk in general, is supported by money flowing into the markets. While the supply of funds – the liquid savings of the private sector that are available to be lend by the holders themselves or by banks that hold the funds on (idle) deposit – is decreasing relative to demand – the liquidity circulating in the real economy and the markets – it’s the perception of credit quality that supports the expansion of the aggregate money supply and somewhat replenishes the liquid savings relative to effective liquidity.

   The price of bitcoin is one part sentiment (the OTM call) and one part CDS.

   Alternatively, to consider the price in terms of the demand for the available aggregate quantity of money we state that it will fall/rise as effective liquidity (real economy; demand for funds) grows/shrinks relative to the liquid savings (supply of funds) especially relative to equities. This relationship will be we weighed by apparent credit quality or, rather, the prospective pace of the growth of the money supply directed at speculative purchases in the financial markets. More succinctly we can state that bitcoin trades in proportion to the money residual and the pace of bank (margin) lending.

   So, the price of BTC will characteristically peak on two occasions: firstly, after bearishness peaks (i.e. maximum demand for cash – residual) and secondly together with bullishness (in the credit markets). In the first instance the central bank may be conducting QE or otherwise increasing the supply of currency which is in low demand due to a bleak economy and low interest rates. In the second, the peak of the economic cycle (growth) will likely come together with increased inflation and mark the high of demand for money (effective liquidity) while at the same time its supply will have likely been slowing due to rising interest rates. Sentiment peaks after the economy. This is what we saw in Q4/25 and Q1/26.

   Subsequently, both the economy and interest rates moderating frees up liquidity and supports markets. We generally don’t go straight into a depression or QE right after or just because a cycle has peaked. Instead, the economy self regulates and in time conditions transpire for a new cycle of growth to begin.

   Crypto peaked in Q4 as markets realised that the AI investment cycle will consume great amounts of capital, and that private credit markets are in dubious condition.

   At present, the Fed and regulators are attempting to ease monetary conditions and with the economy growing modestly the price of bitcoin is in an up-trend. An ideal scenario for bitcoin, as used to be the case for equities during the Yellen Fed, is precisely such growth supported by easy monetary policy. On the other hand, the risk is a liquidity crunch induced either by inflation or a rush to safety (cash) should the economy deteriorate beyond expectations.

   Markets may be experiencing a Tesla moment – if the bulls pull it off, they’ll have earned their laurels.

   In yet other terms we can note the fall in price of bitcoin from its highs as a perceived increase in market risk. Following this reasoning, when everything crashes the supply of BTC will increase pari passu with that of “fiat” (or even more in a stagflationary environment which scenario falls far beyond the mental capacity of crypto boosting hot-heads). If we, as we should, express market risk as the coefficient of correlation of the down movement in prices of all stocks we would expect bitcoin to be falling when this value is the greatest and conversely rising on an equivalent move in the opposite direction.

   Clearly, the hard limit to the pace of money supply growth in the form of the CET1 ratio mentioned above is a drag on the prices of cryptocurrencies (which, being risk and for as while our current monetary and economic system endures, in the event of a crisis must first liquidate before they can rebound on the back of liquidity provided by the central bank).

   It’s also less than fully known, at least by myself, how much of an impact on bank balance sheets would a further drop in crypto assets bring which would make for somewhat of a self-reinforcing effect.

   In all, these conditions should put a cap on returns. Bulls can look forward to an Iran deal that lifts sanctions and puts Iranian oil on the market coupled with positive earnings and outlooks enabling the present momentum to continue. Bears look to risk in private credit. A trap door remains under the markets and if they have thus far resisted the pull of gravity this only means there is that much more distance along which to accelerate on the way down.

   The setup feels suspiciously like a bear market rally and in my opinion there is an elevated probability that risk will head for the exits some time in the following months. If we break through resistance at ATH’s where the S&P currently sits, this will be a sign to add risk in the near term. (That is, if unlike The Man you haven’t already. I promise caution at inflection points is costing everyone money. It’s the “nothing matters” rally, remember, once it gets rolling – and rolling it is.) In this case we might at first think crypto is poised to deliver the most convexity. However, we will bode well to recall that money will remain in demand, be it due to the presumed resumption of the investment cycle or the government’s efforts to reduce the budget deficit. Hence, while the token will be supported in the bull case I don’t believe it will make a new ATH this year. Of course, should the markets fail to meaningfully break higher this will put bears in control for the summer.

   Question is how to best express our outlook. The answer I’ve come across early in this blog but didn’t formally explore. For the financially apt readers it will come naturally as the barbell strategy proposed by Nassim Taleb.

   To conclude I will look ahead to some proposals that I hope will become central to Western politics.

   From a Keynesian point of view, having explored the modern economy, we can state: inequality is the new unemployment.

   And so we have to ask ourselves have mainstream economics once again become orthodox? Is our social contract incomplete and faulty? Can we come to see that repairing it would mean opening entirely new horizons of opportunity? But also that – those who have made the same realisations – the global right are actively working toward the exact opposite: making the world a set of disjunct states ruled by the elites. The status quo is rightly without popular support and the time has come to look for change. To not propose meaningful change is to align with the right. The goal must always be to deliver progress.

   Can the US rise to the challenge? Is the constitutional stipulation that direct taxes must be apportioned inherently at odds with the solution? Is progressive taxation inherently un-american? Surely the wealthier should be allowed to keep the same proportion of their income as everyone? The Constitution is a living document in order to stop itself from becoming an obstacle to prosperity of the nation. To the contrary if it’s become its own purpose, the nations laws will ossify. A lesson from IT (shared by Mr. Beck, right?) is that projects that become difficult to change die. So, on the one hand we find the trickle down economics of an investment bubble: the wealthy having no purpose for their money, and having no way to spend it – they invest in increasingly dubious affairs being valued in private markets in increasingly pyramidal ways, protect their status and retain the bulk of the upside for themselves. (This is again a clue that we live in an instance of a nouveau aristocratic system.) A series of risky bets being an optimal investment strategy (Taleb, Kahneman), vast wealth enables it in practice and effectively perpetuates itself – a goal shared with any amount of capital, so that the only inherently unjust aspects that immediately pop to mind are the accessibility (barriers to entry) of the investment landscape to pools of capital of varying scale and disposition as well as the political acumen that brought about the unquestionable fact that the rich pay a lower proportion of their income in taxes than the middle class (perhaps on par with the poor, making for that “k”) – demonstrated by rules such as lower tax rate for long term investment and losses being deductible that perfectly suits the investment strategy and the character of the economy both.

   Now, the fix afforded by the Democrats finally is starting to seem as approaching the meaning of the word: they seem to have embraced redistribution of wealth.

   The issue I have with Sen. Warren’s plan is that it may end up concentrating more spending power in the hands of the government, in which respect Bernie’s proposal of a de facto universal income is most welcome as it leads to a bottom-up economy, that we would find on the other hand.

   A final thought that popped into my mind on the matter is to consider the global political right merely want to preserve capitalism. To this I would respond that capitalism itself doesn’t pose the question of the origin of capital. A regulatory environment that continuously works to restore broad availability of capital (the trail on which we find the democratic faculty of taking loans) simply makes for better capitalism by both widening the range of offerings that are commercially viable thereby increasing their social utility, as well as providing means for entrepreneurship to proliferate and deliver these offerings.

   Yet the right would collapse the entire argument and claim, against all reason, that UBI is communism. They would stipulate men must work for their meal and in doing so reduce capitalism to an advanced form of feudalism, of slavery – where men must be forced to work and the mechanism of coercion is poverty. They would make us all out to be silly and not understand that the national product is a result of work and that if we all decide to lay flat on our backs our UBI won’t be worth anything. And even if there would be those who do, society should find ways to organise – through technology and openness – to enable pioneers to step in their place.

   The global populist right has been telling lies and playing tricks for far too long. The times are such that not to pursue justice means to be corrupt.

   The only way to win the vote is to promise a better, more believable future.

   This brings me to a close. While in this post too I may have erred, it has undoubtedly brought us closer to the truth. It is the only thing people truly can believe.

   Thanks for reading through!

   #AI #AMZN #Bitcoin #BTC #CRWD #CRWV #Economics #Economy #GOOG #Investing #Markets #MSFT #NVDA #ORCL #politics #Tesla #TSLA #UBI

   #ubi #tsla #tesla #politics #orcl #nvda
6. 

   Ermanno @[email protected] · 2020-07-18 · 21:35 UTC

   CW: The police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were sparks that reignited smoldering fury against authorities across the globe. One of the most watched locations has been Seattle, where protestors barricaded off a cop-free zone, drawing outsize attention and, in the process, forming a new case study in the uses of technology both to […]

   ♲ @[email protected]:

   For Seattle’s cop-free protest zone, tech is both a revolutionary asset and disastrous liability

   The police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were sparks that reignited smoldering fury against authorities across the globe. One of the most watched locations has been Seattle, where protestors barricaded off a cop-free zone, drawing outsize attention and, in the process, forming a new case study in the uses of technology both to advance a cause and to drown it in disinformation.
   
   From the actual recording of Floyd’s killing and the protests and riots that followed, to documenting the police’s brutal response and sudden withdrawal, to the establishment of and widespread commentary on an improvised community, technology has played a crucial role throughout. But to center things properly, it is how people are using technology, not the technology itself, that has become more important.
   
   More than ever before, information truly is power, and imbalances in who holds that power have been both reinforced and challenged in the course of events here. It’s heartening to see live streaming and instant distribution of video lead to accountability, but it’s also sickening to see deliberate campaigns to manipulate and subvert reality — and I say reality because it’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes. As a brief preamble, I should disclose some things.
   
   First, I support the causes being advanced by protestors in Seattle. It would be useless to deny that I have taken sides here — partly because claims of objectivity are little more than a fig leaf for editorial decisions in matters of grave injustice and obvious abuses of power; but my presence at the protests has unavoidably been documented whether I like it or not, so there’s no sense in denying it.
   
   Because second, I live on Capitol Hill, just blocks away from the zone. I’ve been eyewitness to important events, (with a built-in tech angle at that) and it would be irresponsible for me not to use the privilege of this platform to share aspects of them that have been only sporadically covered.
   
   And third, these protests have been organized and led by people of color, and I am a white guy who, comparatively, has only barely taken part. On issues of race, policing, and inclusion I will defer to others better equipped to educate: writers like Ijeoma Oluo (whom we recently interviewed), researchers like Joy Buolamwini, and publications like Blavity.
   
   With that out of the way, this article will focus on three topics: The collection and use of digital media on both sides of police clashes; the use of social media and battle of information versus disinformation in the cop-free zone; and the emergence of live streaming as an indispensable medium for this and future movements.
   

   A matter of perspective

   
   
   techcrunch.com/wp-content/uplo…
   Image Credits: JASON REDMOND/AFP / Getty Images
   
   The initial protests in Seattle in late May, which devolved in some locations into riots involving the despoliation and destruction of police cruisers (somehow left unattended and filled with weapons), are difficult to track because they were full of movement and chaos. But they were thoroughly, if haphazardly, documented by attendees with the presence of mind to record what they were seeing.
   
   It’s telling that there has been little or no attempt at a counter-narrative from Seattle authorities when their officers were repeatedly (and continually as of this writing) filmed employing plainly excessive force against unarmed, often unresisting protestors, or indiscriminately firing tear gas, pepper spray, and flashbangs into crowds. One woman’s heart stopped three times after being struck by a blast ball that appeared to be deliberately aimed at her, while thousands watched.
   
   Where, one wonders, is the exonerating footage from the police side showing the protestors being described as aggressive, or non-compliant, or whatever key words officers use to justify brutality during a melee of their own creation? And yet the police are at a loss. Presented with innumerable examples of bad behavior, the force seems to have decided day after day to stand fast and let it blow over.
   
   But it’s hard to do that when you have something like a video going viral of a child who’s been maced:
   
   https://www.youtube.com/embed/uKdqmBN744U?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
   
   This image, which came to represent the Seattle PD’s inhumane treatment of protestors (they stand by wielding batons as the crying kid is treated), was taken by a local named Evan Hreha. It’s hard to erase such a powerful image — so they arrested him.
   
   Hreha was arrested a week later by a dozen officers and booked into jail for, supposedly, pointing a laser at police. It hardly needs to be said that this account strains credibility. For one thing, Hreha says he was running a hot dog stand with friends at the time of the alleged offense. But it is absurd that police would or could identify one person in a crowd at a distance, then investigate and arrest them — for anything, let alone a fleeting non-violent laser use. And it just happens to be the man behind a viral video that makes the cops look bad.
   
   This seems to be plainly a case of retaliation, but the police have made themselves unaccountable by controlling the information available. I contacted the records department to ask for anything related to the investigation and arrest of Hreha (among others), but it will be months before the police will release anything, if indeed they ever do.
   
   Hreha was released two days later with no charges filed. But the chilling effect of intimidating someone who caught police in an act of brutality on camera had been accomplished. The officer who maced the kid, incidentally, has yet to be officially identified or disciplined.
   

   Does tech have the guts to deploy its resources against police brutality?

   https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/09/does-tech-have-the-guts-to-deploy-its-resources-against-police-brutality/embed/#?secret=gdf5qC5tCH
   
   This is exemplary of the power imbalance in conflicts of this type: On one side, voluminous documentation from people on the ground that is disorganized and difficult to bring to bear; on the other, documentation that is carefully organized and tightly controlled, allowing the exertion of authority using that control as leverage. Police have also begun the process of repurposing news and protestor footage for their own purposes.
   
   But this story doesn’t always play out the way the cops would prefer.
   
   In the first week of June, protestors were marching up Pine to confront the police for this and other acts, after which they would have, like many similar protests, moved on to rally in Volunteer Park and then gone home, to do it again another day. But police blocked them at 11th and Pine with a barricade and line of police in riot gear.
   
   techcrunch.com/wp-content/uplo…
   SEATTLE, WA – JUNE 08: A person holds flowers as demonstrators clash with police near the Seattle Police Departments East Precinct shortly after midnight on June 8, 2020 in Seattle, Washington.
   
   The group did not disperse as ordered, saying they would stay and protest peacefully until the police moved out of the way. Predictably, when curfew came, the police were liberal in their deployment of tear gas and flashbangs, causing serious harm to some protestors and terror across the entire neighborhood. This continued and grew in intensity for several days and nights. (In many cities these clashes are ongoing.)
   
   The justification for using their “less lethal” tools with such gusto was predictable: The crowd was violent, throwing bricks and even improvised explosives at officers. But these claims were repeatedly and firmly dismantled, because these encounters were filmed in high definition from multiple angles, practically from start to finish.
   
   https://www.youtube.com/embed/D5sQt_bQS4A?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
   
   One particularly revealing video was shot by a person on a roof directly over the barriers. It quite clearly shows a peaceful crowd chanting and definitely not throwing rocks and bottles. Anyone can review it and see that there was not only no violence on the part of protestors, but that the flashpoint moment occurred (documented in other videos as well) when a cop tore a now-famous pink umbrella from the grip of a person, who in offering any resistance provided the excuse for the police to retaliate — indiscriminately and utterly disproportionately.
   
   Huge volumes of evidence of police brutality have resulted almost solely from the oft-mocked habit of young people to always have their phone in hand. (We’re not far from the always-recording situation I posited nearly 10 years ago.)
   
   “They picked the wrong generation to pull this shit on,” said TK, a protest organizer I spoke with. “Because governments didn’t create this power — this was created by normal, regular-smegular people just like all of us. The only people that can stop it is the people that created it.”
   
   Rarely have the police released images or footage of their own, and when they do it is often a brutal self-own. They posted images of the aforementioned “improvised explosive” on Twitter shortly after one group assault on protestors, and within seconds people had pointed out it was a prayer candle, probably from a nearby memorial smashed during the melee. The police revised their reference to it as an “incendiary device,” which, while technically true, exposes the type of willful obscuration of the truth that was frequently to be found in the department’s communications.
   
   Following another incident, body cam footage was released to support the narrative that a “violent crowd” had prevented the police from reaching a shooting victim in the protest zone and were therefore culpable in his death. People soon pointed out that timestamps visible in the video show that the cops arrived 20 minutes after the shooting, and after the victim had been taken to the hospital in a private car — because EMTs (for good reason) would not enter the scene before police secured it.
   

   We now know that the public statement put out by Seattle Police following the shooting at CHOP on Friday night, was mostly fictitious, as revealed by their own bodycam footage. They showed up 10 minutes later than they claim, after the victim had been transported to Harborview. pic.twitter.com/wN62gQxX8c
   
   — Spek the Lawless (@spekulation) June 22, 2020

   
   When the police chief made claims of rape and violence in the protest zone, it was pointed out that the SPD’s own crime reports system showed no such thing. Then her claim that armed gangs were extorting local businesses was quickly put down as well, by the businesses themselves — embarrassingly, the source of that claim was a totally invented account on a right-wing blog. (Ironically, once the police retook the zone, businesses quickly complained that their presence had forced them to close.)
   
   And of course there are the innumerable videos, here as elsewhere, of extreme force being used on unresisting protestors, frequently with the apparently now requisite knee on the neck. These will hopefully prove useful later as counterbalance to police claims, and while officers still obscure their badges and refuse to identify themselves, the quality of the video makes identifying them by other means trivial.
   

   Cops attack peaceful protestors at Broadway and Pine. 5:30pm July 2nd. Dive tackled the kid next to me, put a knee on his neck. Can’t stress enough he did nothing.
   
   Please share.#SeattleProtests #SeattleProtestComm #Seattle pic.twitter.com/mI5DTASEI4
   
   — eli (@sre_li) July 3, 2020

   
   The digital record has resulted in officers, the department and the chief being caught in lie after lie after lie. These are not misunderstandings or honest mistakes but misrepresentations deliberately crafted to discredit protestors and shield the department. It’s clear that if others were not carefully documenting every encounter, and critically investigating police statements and evidence, the lies would have shortly become the only, and therefore the true, record of what happened.
   
   What I’ve described took place in Seattle, but others have compiled abuses in L.A., New York, Portland, and Chicago — where cops have just been caught in another type of large-scale manipulation of the record.
   
   Now in many cities these departments are facing cuts or total defunding, as much as the result of their failure to successfully falsify the narrative as their more fundamental failures as institutions.
   
   “This generation is not dumb, as much as they want to believe that. ‘You guys are just a bunch of dumb kids.’ Okay, well, this bunch of dumb kids is about to get the city to take half of your budget,” said TK. “So we ain’t that dumb, apparently.”
   
   A last example of the power of social media in the pursuit of problematic police came late in the writing of this piece. After two protestors were struck and one killed on a closed highway after a driver circumvented police barriers, a detective from the King county Sheriff’s office made several brutally offensive posts on Facebook — public ones.
   
   techcrunch.com/wp-content/uplo…
   
   These were spotted by concerned citizens, who took screenshots not just of the content but also the list of people who had liked or commented positively on the posts, looking them up, as well. This proved to be a shrewd tactic, for when the posts began to make waves online, Brown’s entire Facebook page was deleted.
   
   Turns out Detective Brown is not only Governor Jay Inslee’s cousin, but reportedly also the head of county executive Dow Constantine’s security detail and his sometime driver; a 40-year veteran of the force who has been accused of abusive behavior before. Within 48 hours Detective Brown was on leave and being investigated. One hopes that the officers and public officials who publicly endorsed Brown’s behavior will soon be confronted, as well. But how quickly this avenue of recourse would have disappeared had they been tipped off.
   
   Keeping the cops honest is a welcome application of what might be termed citizen forensics, but social media would soon provide a counter-example of technology being deployed to discredit the protestors and mislead millions.
   

   In the Zone

   
   
   techcrunch.com/wp-content/uplo…
   A rally at the cop-free zone on Capitol Hill on June 10.
   
   Believe it or not, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone wasn’t anyone’s idea.
   
   The now infamous cop-free area barricaded off by protestors has been profiled frequently and, almost without exception, incompletely and inaccurately, in mainstream news and on social media. It’s an instructive but deeply frustrating example of how, as the old saying goes, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
   
   A very brief origin story is as follows: On June 8, following a particularly violent yet ultimately unsuccessful attempt to purge the area of protestors the previous night, the police abruptly announced they would be leaving the East Precinct building, taking all valuables, weapons, and sensitive documents with them.
   
   Protestors were astonished. They had not asked for this and had no reason to — their demands were about defunding the police, investing in the community, and releasing jailed protestors. Incredibly, even now no one has taken responsibility for ordering the abandonment; the mayor and police chief have both denied doing so. But abandon it, they did.
   
   Protestors immediately continued marching, some continuing to Volunteer Park and others remaining behind, citing the need to protect the precinct from anyone who might want to damage it, for days on end if necessary and at all hours. If you’re skeptical, remember: This is all on video. People learned early on that many people only believe what they have seen, and even then only sometimes.
   
   Since a car had nearly plowed through protestors the previous day and the driver actually shot someone (before being gently taken into custody by police), and hearing reports of right-wing agitators in the area, the protestors redeployed the barriers to make a safe zone at the ends of nearby streets. Someone spray painted “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” on one, inadvertently branding the whole movement.
   

   ‘Welcome to Free Capitol Hill’ — Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone forms around emptied East Precinct — UPDATE

   https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/welcome-to-free-capitol-hill-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-forms-around-emptied-east-precinct/embed/#?secret=qUJTj18w53
   
   What followed in the CHAZ (later the CHOP) was several days and nights of compelling events, speakers and tributes to lost lives, attended by thousands, including myself.
   
   But what followed online was a nonstop deluge of wild exaggerations, manipulated media, racist vitriol and, of course, innumerable death threats. It would be impossible to list even a fraction of the information online that I could contradict with what I saw with my own eyes, but here are a few examples.
   
   The most glaring one has to be, of course, Fox News photoshopping a gunman into multiple unrelated scenes of destruction and dishonestly using those as evidence of chaos in the zone. This was done so poorly it would be comical if it were not part of a larger, continuing narrative seeking to discredit the protests and zone as an antifa-run separatist state.
   
   techcrunch.com/wp-content/uplo…
   One of the images run by Fox News, a combination of one by David Ryder (whose photos for Getty illustrate this piece) with two by Karen Ducey.
   
   The separatist narrative, which persists even today, was invented and amplified by lazy or traffic-hungry outlets and pundits with little evidence besides the tongue-in-cheek name.
   
   There was not always the need to invent controversial imagery (indeed, the gunman Fox used really existed). Video of one person handing out rifles to his crew quickly made the rounds and, combined with the police chief’s irresponsible rumor-mongering, word of a “warlord” emerged.
   
   Without getting into the complex and largely improvisational politics of the zone, this character and his heavily armed presence were generally not approved of. But for the weeks following this event I saw the image, his name and the warlord trope posted thousands of times, coming up every single day.
   
   It’s tempting to say it’s hard to misconstrue a guy distributing assault rifles from the back of his car. But it is testament to the fractured narrative presented online that crucial context was almost always left out or substituted by falsehoods. Not only had a gunman actually shot a protestor after driving his car into the crowd the previous day, but at the very moment of the video, the police were suspected to have been engaged in a disinformation campaign intended to provoke conflict.
   
   Public police scanner frequencies that night (which it was known protestors were monitoring) were full of reports of a group of 20-30 armed “Proud Boys” (a far-right group) moving toward the protest zone. Bike police on scanners said they followed the group for blocks, asked where they were headed (the CHAZ), tried to dissuade them from going there, and eventually reported that they spontaneously dispersed before reaching their destination.
   
   Now, a large group of armed men working their way up from Downtown to Capitol Hill would be a rather conspicuous sight even in those days when record numbers of armed men walked the streets. Yet none of the thousands of protestors and allies spread throughout the city watching for them saw anything matching that description during or after. No communications from known Proud Boys (some of whom would in fact show up later to attack a protestor on video) indicated a presence. More directly, police descriptions of the group crossing certain intersections were contradicted by live traffic cameras showing those intersections, which showed no such thing.
   
   But once again the apparent police intention of provocation via misinformation had been achieved. People at the CHAZ, already justifiably worried about violence, were put on high alert and armed themselves, producing a spectacle that even now persists on social media as a way to paint the entire protest with one brush.
   
   The repeated amplification of individual images had some troubling commonalities, in particular the barely veiled parlance of racism. People in the protest zone and especially Black men, images of whom frequently accompanied these tweets and other posts, were invariably described as “thugs,” “savages,” “animals,” “feral,” and all the rest. Tellingly, those employing this vile lexicon were seldom Seattle or Capitol Hill residents; Twitter is very efficient at importing hate.
   
   Indeed it did not take long for the CHAZ, having achieved the dubious distinction of attracting what is called national interest, to become the target of coordinated interference, harassment and disinformation campaigns by people all over the country. The resulting mess is a concise illustration of the incredible promise and complete inadequacy of online platforms in times like these.
   
   The number of people and groups involved in these protests had made Twitter, with its accessibility and relative permanence, an invaluable tool for the dissemination of important information. While private groups on Signal, WhatsApp and Discord were also used, it was clearly better for things like police positioning, march updates, attacks on protestors and other crucial live communications to make the information as prominent and public as possible.
   

   “There was a lot of momentum being built up, people learning and educating themselves. So this was the chance to finally put everything we’d learned into action.”

   
   TK and her fellow organizer Tatii explained that social media was at the heart of their work, though the end result of taking to the streets was always the ultimate goal.
   
   “Social media is a huge part because without it, we can’t do shit,” Tatii said bluntly. “When it comes to finding the information that we need and finding resources to help Black people, all of that is through technology. That’s how we network with people, that’s how people reach out to us. That’s how we get people telling us about police scanners. There are a lot of group chats, like with our medics, our car brigade, our bike brigade. It’s all through social media.”
   
   “Scouts let us know if like there’s 30 bike cops coming down Broadway. It’s crucial when you are trying to strategically plan around that type of stuff, to keep from being cornered and boxed in,” said TK.
   
   “At least on the Black side of social media, it’s constantly been talked about, Black Lives Matter,” added Tatii. “There was a lot of momentum being built up, people learning and educating themselves. So this was the chance to finally put everything we’d learned into action.”
   
   It’s easy to take Twitter for granted, so we should be sure to give the platform due credit for the fundamental capability it provides. Many I’ve spoken to here emphasized that they trusted what they read from accounts with a verifiable track record more than what they saw in the perennially out-of-date local news. In fact, as Tatii and TK noted, many of their fellow organizers came to Seattle specifically to learn for themselves the truth behind mainstream reports that didn’t pass a gut test.
   
   But the choice to publicly organize via hashtag, for all that it made important information available quickly to as many people as possible, had two major consequences.
   
   First, it fragmented that information almost to the point of usability: One never knew whether it was #seattleprotest or #seattleprotests, #seattleprotestcomms, #seatleprotest (yes), plain old #seattle, #defundSPD, or a handful of others. This was only exacerbated with the creation of the CHAZ, which birthed a dozen new hashtags of varying quality and population. Instagram provided powerful amplification effects but little verification or network building.
   
   Twitter also exposed this stream of important information to eager antagonists across the country, who flooded those hashtags with abuse and misinformation. Posts with images from other or past protests were used to mislead or misrepresent the present ones, and pictures of police around the area from other times were used in an attempt to spook those who had learned to be wary of SPD’s presence. Fake names and events were publicized, fake demands issued and met, and fake accounts claiming to represent protestors or the zone.
   
   techcrunch.com/wp-content/uplo…
   This post, though seen by many, was heeded by few.
   
   The ownership of one particular account was hotly contested, and confused by such tantalizing hints as it following Huawei leadership (you can imagine the theories this spawned), and for an “official” statement ending with what appeared to be a few stray pixels from a Biden presidential campaign graphic.
   
   Later, when attempting to provoke a “mission accomplished”-style early exit from the zone after the Mayor cut million from the police budget, the account exhorted its readers to vote for Biden. Needless to say this was not among the commonly agreed-upon demands or positions of the protests. Unless whoever was behind this strange yet prominent account exposes themselves, we may never know if it was a government plant, an agent provocateur or a practical joker, or what their intentions really are.
   
   The enduring, chaotogenic myth that the CHAZ was an attempt to secede and form a socialist, anarchist utopia led to rebranding efforts. The misconception had become so widespread that it was decided to “officially” (as far as that concept existed in the space) change the name to the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest — then, noting the fact that Seattle itself is an “occupation” of native land, change the O to Organized.
   
   This led to a further fragmentation of information channels: No one on the ground wanted to use #CHAZ and its relatives because it was no longer what organizers wanted to call it. But the name had entered the common parlance. So posts now needed to be #CHAZ, #CHOP, #CHOPCHAZ, and others like #CHAZSeattle and so on. It became very difficult to track an event — be it positive, like a march or speaker, or negative, like a fight or shooting — never knowing where to look or how to parse the information there.
   
   It’s hard to overstate how effective the fractured narrative and opposing efforts were at shaping the national and global understanding of events surrounding these protests.
   
   As they say you can never step into the same river twice, so it was on social media around the protest and the zone. The ever-shifting flow of Twitter sometimes produced absolutely vital data unavailable anywhere else, but always polluted with incomplete or premature judgments, ignorance, racism and false reports.
   
   When I asked what digital tools were needed to better organize and avoid interference, protestors I spoke with generally said some sort of centralization and interoperability. Being able to colocate multiple feeds, authors, videos, images and static links in a dynamic, accessible way would save them huge amounts of time and effort. Certainly it would have helped to alleviate some of the problems noted above.
   

   Stream of conscience

   
   

   “Live streaming and having our phones out every single day is our best form of self defense.”

   Despite the shortcomings of social media at large, one digital medium that has proven itself truly indispensable to this protest and others to come is live streaming.
   Although the technology has risen to mainstream popularity as a new form of passive entertainment on Twitch and other live platforms, it quickly became clear that it was the technology of choice for documenting these and other protests and social movements.
   
   As TK put it: “People are visual learners; until they see it for themselves they don’t really believe it. And when it’s live, it’s live. You’re not seeing the cut, clipped and edited version. You can’t dispute what you see in raw live footage. You can’t ignore it.”
   
   In Seattle, two people have become familiar faces, or voices, as they have doggedly documented every step of the protests this way, from before the CHOP to well after: Omari Salisbury and Joey Wieser.
   
   techcrunch.com/wp-content/uplo…
   Image Credits: Jake Gravbot
   
   Salisbury runs Converge Media, an independent web-distributed news organization. He comes from a broadcast and networking background, and when the CHOP emerged literally outside his doorstep — the studio door opened onto the police line before officers left — he took the opportunity to share the story, as objectively as possible. To him, the only tool that fit the bill was live streaming.
   
   “The viewer needs to be able to see the context, because if the viewer can’t see the context, then it becomes something else,” he said. “People appreciate us because the stream is long, we keep the camera there and we let people make their own decisions.”
   
   He was there not just for the controversial or terrifying moments, like clashes between provocateurs and protestors, or the shootings that occurred later on, but for the huge number of peaceful hours when people would share their own experiences at Salisbury’s prompting. The result is an incredibly valuable archive of hundreds of hours of live footage, ground truth from inside the zone that has been watched by millions.
   
   Joey Wieser has no media background, but rather just a passing familiarity with the systems and social media methods that can grab people’s attention. Yet his stream came to be relied on by many, and the events he captured also racked up millions of views, simply because he decided to take advantage of the tools at his disposal.
   

   “It's not that we don't have umbrellas. We just never met a storm worthy of one.
   
   Until this week.” -Seattle pic.twitter.com/STGnwIc3sZ
   
   — Joey Wieser (@itsjosephryan) June 8, 2020

   
   “Live streaming and having our phones out every single day is our best form of self defense. Every day that I walk out my doorstep, I hold my phone as if it is my ultimate shield, my ultimate weapon,” he said. “Without it, I feel like I don’t have a role in this movement. It’s not like I’m some prolific live streamer, or that I know what Black communities need best. I’m just some white guy and I happen to work in tech. Having an understanding of what social media best practices look like, understanding analytics and social amplification — that combined with my community activism allowed me to come out here and do this.”
   
   For Wieser, having the right connections or network was less important than being in the right place at the right time, even if it put him in danger. (He and Omari were both tear gassed multiple times and near shootings and other altercations.)
   
   “I think it really puts the viewer at home in the driver’s seat,” he said. “Because they’re able to not only watch an uninterrupted stream, but to engage and have a real live conversation with somebody that’s there on the ground. You know, they can say, hey, turn to the left. What was that? It’s a participatory experience in a way watching the news doesn’t allow.”
   
   One such incident I saw play out almost defies belief. Wieser was streaming the protest when a truck blasted through, nearly hitting several people. Minutes later, a person watching the stream was surprised when that very truck pulled up outside their apartment — it was their DoorDash driver, who announced proudly that they had just run down some protestors. (The driver’s plates and info were quickly sent through the proper channels.)
   

   THE PLOT THICKENS: The man in this truck is a driver for @DoorDash and was making a delivery. The customer was literally watching the livestream as the silver truck pulled up outside their home. pic.twitter.com/di1eI9bQjE
   
   — Joey Wieser (@itsjosephryan) July 1, 2020

   
   Being a two-way medium, it provides new opportunities for interference as well as engagement. Both Salisbury and Wieser experienced repeated attempts to pollute their comment sections or attack them personally.
   
   “It’s not lost on me that this amplification can be used against us, but I think one of the important things about live streaming is that you can inject your own narrative, rather than let it be to the whim of, you know, Fox News or Sinclair,” said Wieser. “Regardless of whether or not the trolls take it over in the comment sections or in the hashtags, if you’re actually listening to the content, and if you’ve got someone out here who has the right heart and the right passion and the right analysis, you can reclaim that narrative.”
   

   “The citizen journalist has always existed. They just never had the tools to be on equal footing with national news.”

   Salisbury, for his part, expressed that it is not always sufficient to simply document — one has to report, and that’s what he does.
   “People rock with me because just turning on the camera and streaming, it’s not enough. Knowing the history of Seattle, the history of the neighborhood, understanding political positions… and you got to put paint where it ain’t, you know what I’m saying? The citizen journalist has always existed. They just never had the tools to be on equal footing with national news,” he said.
   
   “People underestimate the tech that’s out there, especially the free stuff,” he continued. “I know people have their views about platforms and privacy. And I think that’s a different discussion. But I will say that what’s going on here allows for citizen journalists to touch the world. I used to build OTT and streaming platforms in Europe and across Africa. So understanding the actual technology that goes into this, man, I really don’t take no stream for granted. I’ve got people in Australia who’ve been on since day one. What if I had to cultivate that through my own contacts, do my own server, do my own everything? How would I reach them? It doesn’t work that way.”
   
   He credits live streaming with putting pressure on local and national outlets to up their game, as well — being showed up by one person with a phone doesn’t look good for a major news organization.
   
   “Citizen journalists and streamers came out here and forced the local media to change their whole game,” he said. “I mean, a guy with a cell phone didn’t get no respect back in the day. But I had my interviews with the mayor before anybody, my interviews with Chief Best before anybody. You see what I’m saying? I’m just a guy with a phone. Now the Seattle Times has a streamer out here. This situation has made the media adapt new technology.”
   
   While live broadcasts have been part of local and national news for decades, it was in truth a totally different medium. But it’s now difficult to imagine coverage of events like these without modern live streaming, and legacy media have begun to recognize that. Technology has always been a double-edged sword. The events in Seattle and across the country have illustrated this powerfully, and it seems unarguable that whatever happens in terms of policy and politics, the nature of protesting and the power dynamic that has defined it for decades has begun to change.
   
   Ultimately, though, the power does not belong to the tech, but to the people.
   
   “Technology plays a big part in all this, but I’m gonna be real with you, what you need is more old fashioned beating your feet to the streets,” concluded TK. “It’s not that the technology is insufficient, but that people are choosing not to use technology to understand.
   
   “We’ve proven it time and time again that the only ones that really got our back is us.”
   
   feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techc… feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techc… feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techc… feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techc… feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techc… feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techc…
   techcrunch.com/2020/07/18/for-…

   #seattle #chaz #seattleprotest #seattleprotests #seattleprotestcomms #seatleprotest
7. 

   Brian Greenberg :verified: @[email protected] · 2026-04-24 · 16:24 UTC

   A Chinese national pretended to be U.S. engineers and researchers for almost five years, from 2017 to 2021, and walked away with sensitive aerospace and weapons development software from NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. There was no hacking or breaking through firewalls. People simply emailed him what he asked for, because they believed he was someone they knew.

   This worries me more than any zero-day vulnerability. The NASA OIG reported that Song Wu asked for the same software several times without explaining why he needed it. Most people miss this kind of red flag because no one teaches them to spot it. We invest millions in technology controls but spend very little on training people to pause and think like a threat actor before sending information.

   Export controls are not only about legal compliance. They are also about human behavior. Your employees make export control decisions every day, often without realizing it.

   When was the last time your organization ran a spear-phishing simulation aimed at your researchers, not just your finance team?

   If your security awareness program doesn't cover identity deception and unusual software requests, it is not thorough enough.

   https://thehackernews.com/2026/04/nasa-employees-duped-in-chinese.html
   #Cybersecurity #NationalSecurity #Espionage #SecurityAwareness #InfoSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec

   #cybersecurity #nationalsecurity #espionage #securityawareness #infosec #security
8. 

   Brian Greenberg :verified: @[email protected] · 2026-04-24 · 16:24 UTC

   A Chinese national pretended to be U.S. engineers and researchers for almost five years, from 2017 to 2021, and walked away with sensitive aerospace and weapons development software from NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. There was no hacking or breaking through firewalls. People simply emailed him what he asked for, because they believed he was someone they knew.

   This worries me more than any zero-day vulnerability. The NASA OIG reported that Song Wu asked for the same software several times without explaining why he needed it. Most people miss this kind of red flag because no one teaches them to spot it. We invest millions in technology controls but spend very little on training people to pause and think like a threat actor before sending information.

   Export controls are not only about legal compliance. They are also about human behavior. Your employees make export control decisions every day, often without realizing it.

   When was the last time your organization ran a spear-phishing simulation aimed at your researchers, not just your finance team?

   If your security awareness program doesn't cover identity deception and unusual software requests, it is not thorough enough.

   https://thehackernews.com/2026/04/nasa-employees-duped-in-chinese.html
   #Cybersecurity #NationalSecurity #Espionage #SecurityAwareness #InfoSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec

   #cybersecurity #nationalsecurity #espionage #securityawareness #infosec #security
9. 

   Brian Greenberg :verified: @[email protected] · 2026-04-24 · 16:24 UTC

   A Chinese national pretended to be U.S. engineers and researchers for almost five years, from 2017 to 2021, and walked away with sensitive aerospace and weapons development software from NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. There was no hacking or breaking through firewalls. People simply emailed him what he asked for, because they believed he was someone they knew.

   This worries me more than any zero-day vulnerability. The NASA OIG reported that Song Wu asked for the same software several times without explaining why he needed it. Most people miss this kind of red flag because no one teaches them to spot it. We invest millions in technology controls but spend very little on training people to pause and think like a threat actor before sending information.

   Export controls are not only about legal compliance. They are also about human behavior. Your employees make export control decisions every day, often without realizing it.

   When was the last time your organization ran a spear-phishing simulation aimed at your researchers, not just your finance team?

   If your security awareness program doesn't cover identity deception and unusual software requests, it is not thorough enough.

   https://thehackernews.com/2026/04/nasa-employees-duped-in-chinese.html
   #Cybersecurity #NationalSecurity #Espionage #SecurityAwareness #InfoSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec

   #cybersecurity #nationalsecurity #espionage #securityawareness #infosec #security
10. 

    Brian Greenberg :verified: @[email protected] · 2026-04-24 · 16:24 UTC

    A Chinese national pretended to be U.S. engineers and researchers for almost five years, from 2017 to 2021, and walked away with sensitive aerospace and weapons development software from NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. There was no hacking or breaking through firewalls. People simply emailed him what he asked for, because they believed he was someone they knew.

    This worries me more than any zero-day vulnerability. The NASA OIG reported that Song Wu asked for the same software several times without explaining why he needed it. Most people miss this kind of red flag because no one teaches them to spot it. We invest millions in technology controls but spend very little on training people to pause and think like a threat actor before sending information.

    Export controls are not only about legal compliance. They are also about human behavior. Your employees make export control decisions every day, often without realizing it.

    When was the last time your organization ran a spear-phishing simulation aimed at your researchers, not just your finance team?

    If your security awareness program doesn't cover identity deception and unusual software requests, it is not thorough enough.

    https://thehackernews.com/2026/04/nasa-employees-duped-in-chinese.html
    #Cybersecurity #NationalSecurity #Espionage #SecurityAwareness #InfoSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec

    #cloud #privacy #security #infosec #securityawareness #espionage
11. 

    Brian Greenberg :verified: @[email protected] · 2026-04-24 · 16:24 UTC

    A Chinese national pretended to be U.S. engineers and researchers for almost five years, from 2017 to 2021, and walked away with sensitive aerospace and weapons development software from NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. There was no hacking or breaking through firewalls. People simply emailed him what he asked for, because they believed he was someone they knew.

    This worries me more than any zero-day vulnerability. The NASA OIG reported that Song Wu asked for the same software several times without explaining why he needed it. Most people miss this kind of red flag because no one teaches them to spot it. We invest millions in technology controls but spend very little on training people to pause and think like a threat actor before sending information.

    Export controls are not only about legal compliance. They are also about human behavior. Your employees make export control decisions every day, often without realizing it.

    When was the last time your organization ran a spear-phishing simulation aimed at your researchers, not just your finance team?

    If your security awareness program doesn't cover identity deception and unusual software requests, it is not thorough enough.

    https://thehackernews.com/2026/04/nasa-employees-duped-in-chinese.html
    #Cybersecurity #NationalSecurity #Espionage #SecurityAwareness #InfoSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec

    #cybersecurity #nationalsecurity #espionage #securityawareness #infosec #security
12. 

    Kevin @[email protected] · 2025-11-18 · 13:18 UTC

    European vs. American Investors: Two Worlds, Two Mindsets

    Over the past weeks, I had the opportunity to attend two major events shaping my entrepreneurial perspective: the Venture Days in Luxembourg and the Web Summit in Lisbon. Both were intense, inspiring and at times overwhelming, especially because I was wearing all the hats at once.

    Building a solid business plan, compelling a pitch deck, developing the software, managing stakeholders and potential customers, while simultaneously running a fast-growing open-source project is challenging. But these events gave me invaluable insights into how differently European and American investors think and why this has such a deep impact on how we must communicate.

    European Investors

    Pragmatic. Detail-driven. Break-even focused.

    In Luxembourg and other European settings, conversations consistently revolved around questions such as:

    • How fast can you reach break-even?
    • Show me the exact numbers, prices and sources.
    • How precisely is the market researched?
    • What is the unit economics structure?

    European investors tend to value stability, caution and predictability. They expect detailed business plans where every calculation is documented in depth. Market research, pricing models, competitive matrices and break-even analyses carry significant weight.

    What is often missing is ambition.
    The desire to change the world is frequently overshadowed by a culture centered around minimizing risk. Radical innovation becomes rare. Founders are encouraged to think small, stay safe and avoid big leaps. As a result, Europe produces far fewer breakthrough technologies.

    American Investors

    Vision first. Details later.

    The conversations I had with American investors, both in Luxembourg and Lisbon, felt dramatically different.

    Their core interests centered around questions such as:

    • How do you dominate the global market?
    • What is the story and the movement you are building?
    • How big can this become?
    • What is the monopoly you are aiming for?

    American-style investors think in terms of global market power, narrative, category creation and world-changing potential. They want to invest in huge visions and massive outcomes, even if the roadmap is not fully defined yet.

    For them, communication must be bold, visionary and transformative.

    This Creates a Communication Challenge

    Switching between these mindsets is not easy. You cannot pitch the same story in Germany as you would in Silicon Valley.

    That’s why I created a communication matrix that highlights the differences between the “German/European Approach” and the “American Approach”. It helps me stay conscious about how to communicate depending on the audience and their cultural expectations.

    Pitching is not just about the product — it is about the mindset of the listener.

    Why We Are Building Infinito.Nexus

    Infinito.Nexus aims to become the universal platform for rapidly building sovereign IT infrastructure. Organizations should be able to operate an essentially unlimited number of SaaS applications behind a single SSO layer, fully sovereign, on any servers or providers they choose, without being exposed to monopoly pressure or external control.

    Our vision extends to hardware. Laptops, servers and even smartphones will be delivered preconfigured, ready to use the very next day, and immediately integrated into a sovereign infrastructure. The platform becomes the foundation for sovereign IT by combining automated deployment, full application integration and ready-to-use hardware into one seamless ecosystem.

    Different Expectations in the US and Europe

    US investors respond strongly to the transformative scale of this vision. For them, we explicitly highlight that Infinito.Nexus aims to become the dominant platform for sovereign IT deployments worldwide. This may sound paradoxical in the context of sovereignty, yet it is entirely compatible. Everything remains open source and users remain free to host wherever they want, but they naturally stay with us because of convenience, automation and usability. The logic is identical to how people today choose Netflix instead of downloading movies or Spotify instead of pirating music. Convenience creates loyalty.

    For US investors, we emphasize that this convenience-driven retention enables us to secure long-term platform dominance. In addition, we guarantee enterprise-level SLAs and large-scale managed deployment services when the infrastructure is provisioned through our platform, which further strengthens trust at the enterprise level and reinforces our strategic position.

    European investors think differently. They place higher value on predictable steps, measurable risk management and immediate practical value. While they understand the long-term vision, they expect a grounded and incremental approach that fits the realities of the European market.

    Adapting the European Narrative

    For the European context we present a slower and more conservative scaling strategy. Instead of focusing immediately on global automation, we begin with B2B delivery teams that manually roll out sovereign environments for startups and technologically open young companies. This lowers perceived risk but increases operational cost and reduces speed, and it creates exposure to competitors who scale more aggressively. Nevertheless, this approach aligns with the European preference for reliability, trust-building and controlled expansion.

    In addition, the European narrative places a much stronger emphasis on consulting. Unlike in the US narrative, where consulting is downplayed due to poor scalability, in Europe consulting is both expected and necessary. It gives us the ability to tailor environments more deeply to customer needs, particularly for complex ERP and CRM integrations that require significant customization. Consulting also reinforces the perception of reliability and competence, which is essential for conservative investors.

    A Unified Perspective

    Both narratives describe the same product and the same mission. The US approach highlights global market leadership, platform dominance supported by convenience retention and enterprise-level services. The European approach emphasizes concrete value, trust-building, customization and predictable growth. The difference is not in the substance of the platform, but in how the story is framed so each audience sees exactly why Infinito.Nexus fits their worldview and investment culture.

    #americanInvestors #breakEvenAnalysis #businessPlan #cloudDeployment #digitalSovereignty #entrepreneurship #europeanInvestors #founderInsights #fundingStrategy #globalScaling #infinitoNexus #innovationMindset #investmentCulture #investorCommunication #itInfrastructureMarketplace #openSource #pitchStrategy #saasAutomation #sovereignCloud #startupEurope #startupFinancing #startupUsa #techEcosystem #unitEconomics #ventureCapital #ventureDaysLuxembourg #webSummitLisbon

    #americaninvestors #breakevenanalysis #businessplan #clouddeployment #digitalsovereignty #entrepreneurship
13. 

    abolitionmedia @[email protected] · 2026-05-12 · 04:41 UTC

    A Tractor in Common and the Case of the Crazy Parrot

    I. The Geneaology of the Tamale.

    To the Searching Mothers, with admiration and respect.

    I should tell you that I never thought I would see this in my lifetime. This combination of knowledge and practices rooted in traditions from many decades ago, with applied science and technology. Yes, in the countryside. Yes, in the struggle for life.

    Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés has explained the process to me:

    First, you choose the land. The flatter, the better. Next comes what is called “tumbar y rozar”—that is, using a machete and, sometimes, an axe, you cut down large, medium, and small trees. If it is already land that was once a cornfield, then it is acahual (small trees and plants). If it was pastureland, then there are no trees. You have to wait for it to dry out well, and then comes the “quema,” which consists, as the name implies, of setting the land on fire so that the soil is fertilized with the ash. Next comes clearing, that is, removing stones, logs, branches, and roots. Then comes planting, which is done with a coa (a straight stick, sometimes with an iron tip). The person planting carries the seeds in a small backpack, moving forward little by little, poking the ground with the coa and placing the seed in the soil. Then it’s a matter of waiting for rain. Of course, if the dry season (the hot season), with its strong winds, hasn’t carried the fire beyond the “firebreak,” then we have to organize collectively to go put it out before the fire spreads and reaches the forest… or the villages.

    If it rains, that’s good. If it doesn’t rain, that’s bad. And then you have to set off firecrackers in the sky to wake up the clouds and make them pour down onto the earth, where the seed awaits the life that every drop of water carries.

    Then after? Wait, and keep an eye on the weather. If all goes well, in about three months there will be corn on the cob, and then dried corn. Then comes the harvest: gathering the ears and piling them in a small shed they call a “troje.” From there, whenever needed, a few ears are brought home, and the whole family (grandparents, parents, and the kids) sits down to shell them. Next comes cooking the corn, with some lime extracted from stones. The lime comes from a special white stone. In some places they call it Poj’ton. It’s heated with firewood and then ground until it becomes a fine powder. If you can’t find it, you can make it from the shell of a river snail. And if you don’t have Poj’ton or a snail, well tough luck, you just have to earn the money to buy the lime.

    A compañera explains to me: “Not just anyone can mix the lime with the corn. You need, as they say, the moms. Your mom tells you how much lime to put in the pot with the corn in water. If it’s not just right, it won’t work. And if you add too much, it stings. So you have to calculate it, just as your mom teaches you. Once you grow up, well, you know how to calculate. But it’s not like you measure with centiliters, milliliters, and all that math stuff. It’s that you measure just as your mom teaches you. And you have to mix it well by hand, so there are no little lumps, but just right.

    If you don’t learn to do things right, word gets around town fast and people look down on you. And it’s even worse for the mother—people talk behind her back, saying she doesn’t teach her children about corn, that is, about life. So the children have to learn well. As they say, moms need their kids. I think that’s why they scold us so much when we’re little, so we’ll learn. And that’s why moms are always thinking about their kids, and if they’re not around, they look for them. If we didn’t have moms, I think we’d all die on the spot.

    -*-

    Next, once the corn is cooked, keep grinding it by hand using an old mechanical grinder. If you don’t have one, use a metate and a grinding stone. Then you’ll have the dough ready for tortillas… or tamales. If it’s a celebration, then maybe with cuche (pork), chicken, or turkey. And the recado, of course, which is like the seasoning you put on the meat. If there’s no meat, then beans… or vegetables (yucky). You can also make it with green or red chili peppers, and with sugar. After all that, and if you’re lucky enough that the cook doesn’t leave the tamale undercooked, then you’ll be able to eat tamales. And if it’s undercooked, well, too bad—you still have to eat it because that’s all there is. Of course, you’d better make sure there’s a outhouse nearby.

    If it’s a party, there’s dancing. Yes, cumbias. Although later there’s also rock, ska, banda, and that kind of music that makes the young men and women jump around as if they were on top of an anthill. But love—and, of course, heartbreak—tend to blossom and bear fruit with the cumbias. There, the hips promise fevers… and sleepless nights… and rains… and hardships.

    -*-

    And then? Well, back to where we started. And so on and on, forever and ever. Humanity exists because the earth exists. In other words, you might say that the earth is the mother of humanity. Just imagine if there were no earth—where would you get all the junk food you eat? Without the earth, there is no food, no animals, no air, no rain. There is nothing. That is why we say that land is life.

    The peoples and communities of the National Indigenous Congress taught us to say “territory.” In other words, it’s not just the earth itself, but also the water, the forests, the wild animals, the rain, the wind, the sun. Everything. When we say “land,” we mean all of that; but in the cities, they understand land as a piece of land and not as a whole. That’s why the CNI taught us to say “territory.”

    -*-

    Today’s wars, by the way, are fought to conquer territory. That is why it doesn’t matter how many people are killed or how many buildings, hospitals, schools (with girls inside), and entire neighborhoods are destroyed. Because that is what capitalist war is all about: destroying in order to rebuild later; and depopulating in order to later reorganize the conquered territory. And that is why there are, within humanity, what are called “Guardians” of the earth, that is, of the territory. In other words, they are the offspring of Mother Earth, the Resistance, and Rebellion. And that is why they murder, disappear, and imprison the defenders of the forests. And that is why the problem is not Netanyahu or Trump. Or at least, not only them.

    Because with or without them, the Boss Man—the capitalist system, that is—wants to murder people and destroy entire populations. Because it is in those populations and in the hearts of those people, that life lives.

    That is how the system was born: by killing and destroying. That is how it grew. And that is how it sustains itself, even as its methods and justifications change. The capitalist system is death. Not just for humanity. But for the entire planet as well. That is why we say that the struggle against capitalism is the struggle for life. And vice versa.

    Who understands this best and most deeply? Well, those who live in a territory—that is, on the land. But they do not fight for ownership of the territory; rather, they fight to defend it. And that is why capitalism attacks them, because they stand in the way of its plan.

    -*-

    I asked SubMoy, “So there’s no more burning?”

    “No, we’re showing them—teaching our compañeros and the partisan brothers—that by using this technique, burning is no longer necessary, so the fire doesn’t spread and endanger animals, trees, and people. Plus, there’s no more smoke. And you don’t have to wait for rain or waste fireworks. So, without stopping work on the land, you can take care of it and improve it.”

    “And where did the tractor come from?”

    “Ah, they’d had it sitting in a shed for years, but they weren’t using it and it was just sitting there falling apart. Then the Commons came to the rescue. The drivers went, fixed it up, washed it, made it look sharp, and moved it to this land that belongs to the Common—which belongs to everyone and to no one.”

    “But maybe the day after, there won’t be any fuel for the tractor… or even a tractor.”

    “Oh, sure. But we’re learning from our great-great-grandparents and grandparents, who made do with what they had and used their wits. The point is always to take care of Mother Earth.”

    A compañero is someone who teaches and has students, mainly Tzotzil and Cho’ol. That compañero is from Puy de Roberto Barrios, and he comes with his group to put what they learn into practice. Because if you don’t apply what you know, it’s all for nothing. In other words, he wants practice. The place where he teaches could well be called “Center for Zapatista Rebel Research, Analysis, and Teaching on Rural Work and the Defense and Care of Mother Earth, Combining the Knowledge of Our Ancestors with Knowledge of the Sciences, Techniques, Arts, and Whatever Comes to Mind and We Invent Based on What We See in Practice” (CIAERZTCDCMTCCNACCTALVAOISVP, for its Spanish acronym).

    Nah, it’s not really called that. But they’re going to give it some name. Maybe just as long or even longer—I don’t know.

    The thing is, just like with cumbias, what really counts is putting that knowledge into practice. Because you could certainly write books on cumbia theory, explaining hip rotation and the rhythm of the feet and hands using ellipses and parables, differential equations, and asymptotes. But, man, if you don’t practice it, it’ll look like your pants are made of cardboard or that you’ve got a cramp.

    -*-

    When I saw that the sprinklers were already running and they were planting, I thought, “Now I can die in peace.” I think I said it out loud, because Verónica, who was butting in as usual, said, “Again?!” And, looking at me disapprovingly, she added, “People are getting sick of you dying all the time. Even the women in the villages have already complained to SubMoy that they’re praying for nothing every time they go by.”

    “So they’re praying for me?”

    “No way! They’re praying for the poor devil who’s going to suffer when you get to hell and start up your mischief.”

    Well, but that’s not the point…

    -*-

    All over the world, stories of resistance and defiance are blossoming. Yesterday, they were called Venezuela. Today, they are called Iran and Cuba. They are always called Palestine. Because there will always be those who refuse to give up, sell out, or back down.

    (To be continued…)

    The Captain
    April-May 2026

    souce: Schools for Chiapas

    https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=32561 #chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #zapatista

    #chiapas #ezln #mexico #northamerica #zapatista
14. 

    abolitionmedia @[email protected] · 2026-05-12 · 04:41 UTC

    A Tractor in Common and the Case of the Crazy Parrot

    I. The Geneaology of the Tamale.

    To the Searching Mothers, with admiration and respect.

    I should tell you that I never thought I would see this in my lifetime. This combination of knowledge and practices rooted in traditions from many decades ago, with applied science and technology. Yes, in the countryside. Yes, in the struggle for life.

    Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés has explained the process to me:

    First, you choose the land. The flatter, the better. Next comes what is called “tumbar y rozar”—that is, using a machete and, sometimes, an axe, you cut down large, medium, and small trees. If it is already land that was once a cornfield, then it is acahual (small trees and plants). If it was pastureland, then there are no trees. You have to wait for it to dry out well, and then comes the “quema,” which consists, as the name implies, of setting the land on fire so that the soil is fertilized with the ash. Next comes clearing, that is, removing stones, logs, branches, and roots. Then comes planting, which is done with a coa (a straight stick, sometimes with an iron tip). The person planting carries the seeds in a small backpack, moving forward little by little, poking the ground with the coa and placing the seed in the soil. Then it’s a matter of waiting for rain. Of course, if the dry season (the hot season), with its strong winds, hasn’t carried the fire beyond the “firebreak,” then we have to organize collectively to go put it out before the fire spreads and reaches the forest… or the villages.

    If it rains, that’s good. If it doesn’t rain, that’s bad. And then you have to set off firecrackers in the sky to wake up the clouds and make them pour down onto the earth, where the seed awaits the life that every drop of water carries.

    Then after? Wait, and keep an eye on the weather. If all goes well, in about three months there will be corn on the cob, and then dried corn. Then comes the harvest: gathering the ears and piling them in a small shed they call a “troje.” From there, whenever needed, a few ears are brought home, and the whole family (grandparents, parents, and the kids) sits down to shell them. Next comes cooking the corn, with some lime extracted from stones. The lime comes from a special white stone. In some places they call it Poj’ton. It’s heated with firewood and then ground until it becomes a fine powder. If you can’t find it, you can make it from the shell of a river snail. And if you don’t have Poj’ton or a snail, well tough luck, you just have to earn the money to buy the lime.

    A compañera explains to me: “Not just anyone can mix the lime with the corn. You need, as they say, the moms. Your mom tells you how much lime to put in the pot with the corn in water. If it’s not just right, it won’t work. And if you add too much, it stings. So you have to calculate it, just as your mom teaches you. Once you grow up, well, you know how to calculate. But it’s not like you measure with centiliters, milliliters, and all that math stuff. It’s that you measure just as your mom teaches you. And you have to mix it well by hand, so there are no little lumps, but just right.

    If you don’t learn to do things right, word gets around town fast and people look down on you. And it’s even worse for the mother—people talk behind her back, saying she doesn’t teach her children about corn, that is, about life. So the children have to learn well. As they say, moms need their kids. I think that’s why they scold us so much when we’re little, so we’ll learn. And that’s why moms are always thinking about their kids, and if they’re not around, they look for them. If we didn’t have moms, I think we’d all die on the spot.

    -*-

    Next, once the corn is cooked, keep grinding it by hand using an old mechanical grinder. If you don’t have one, use a metate and a grinding stone. Then you’ll have the dough ready for tortillas… or tamales. If it’s a celebration, then maybe with cuche (pork), chicken, or turkey. And the recado, of course, which is like the seasoning you put on the meat. If there’s no meat, then beans… or vegetables (yucky). You can also make it with green or red chili peppers, and with sugar. After all that, and if you’re lucky enough that the cook doesn’t leave the tamale undercooked, then you’ll be able to eat tamales. And if it’s undercooked, well, too bad—you still have to eat it because that’s all there is. Of course, you’d better make sure there’s a outhouse nearby.

    If it’s a party, there’s dancing. Yes, cumbias. Although later there’s also rock, ska, banda, and that kind of music that makes the young men and women jump around as if they were on top of an anthill. But love—and, of course, heartbreak—tend to blossom and bear fruit with the cumbias. There, the hips promise fevers… and sleepless nights… and rains… and hardships.

    -*-

    And then? Well, back to where we started. And so on and on, forever and ever. Humanity exists because the earth exists. In other words, you might say that the earth is the mother of humanity. Just imagine if there were no earth—where would you get all the junk food you eat? Without the earth, there is no food, no animals, no air, no rain. There is nothing. That is why we say that land is life.

    The peoples and communities of the National Indigenous Congress taught us to say “territory.” In other words, it’s not just the earth itself, but also the water, the forests, the wild animals, the rain, the wind, the sun. Everything. When we say “land,” we mean all of that; but in the cities, they understand land as a piece of land and not as a whole. That’s why the CNI taught us to say “territory.”

    -*-

    Today’s wars, by the way, are fought to conquer territory. That is why it doesn’t matter how many people are killed or how many buildings, hospitals, schools (with girls inside), and entire neighborhoods are destroyed. Because that is what capitalist war is all about: destroying in order to rebuild later; and depopulating in order to later reorganize the conquered territory. And that is why there are, within humanity, what are called “Guardians” of the earth, that is, of the territory. In other words, they are the offspring of Mother Earth, the Resistance, and Rebellion. And that is why they murder, disappear, and imprison the defenders of the forests. And that is why the problem is not Netanyahu or Trump. Or at least, not only them.

    Because with or without them, the Boss Man—the capitalist system, that is—wants to murder people and destroy entire populations. Because it is in those populations and in the hearts of those people, that life lives.

    That is how the system was born: by killing and destroying. That is how it grew. And that is how it sustains itself, even as its methods and justifications change. The capitalist system is death. Not just for humanity. But for the entire planet as well. That is why we say that the struggle against capitalism is the struggle for life. And vice versa.

    Who understands this best and most deeply? Well, those who live in a territory—that is, on the land. But they do not fight for ownership of the territory; rather, they fight to defend it. And that is why capitalism attacks them, because they stand in the way of its plan.

    -*-

    I asked SubMoy, “So there’s no more burning?”

    “No, we’re showing them—teaching our compañeros and the partisan brothers—that by using this technique, burning is no longer necessary, so the fire doesn’t spread and endanger animals, trees, and people. Plus, there’s no more smoke. And you don’t have to wait for rain or waste fireworks. So, without stopping work on the land, you can take care of it and improve it.”

    “And where did the tractor come from?”

    “Ah, they’d had it sitting in a shed for years, but they weren’t using it and it was just sitting there falling apart. Then the Commons came to the rescue. The drivers went, fixed it up, washed it, made it look sharp, and moved it to this land that belongs to the Common—which belongs to everyone and to no one.”

    “But maybe the day after, there won’t be any fuel for the tractor… or even a tractor.”

    “Oh, sure. But we’re learning from our great-great-grandparents and grandparents, who made do with what they had and used their wits. The point is always to take care of Mother Earth.”

    A compañero is someone who teaches and has students, mainly Tzotzil and Cho’ol. That compañero is from Puy de Roberto Barrios, and he comes with his group to put what they learn into practice. Because if you don’t apply what you know, it’s all for nothing. In other words, he wants practice. The place where he teaches could well be called “Center for Zapatista Rebel Research, Analysis, and Teaching on Rural Work and the Defense and Care of Mother Earth, Combining the Knowledge of Our Ancestors with Knowledge of the Sciences, Techniques, Arts, and Whatever Comes to Mind and We Invent Based on What We See in Practice” (CIAERZTCDCMTCCNACCTALVAOISVP, for its Spanish acronym).

    Nah, it’s not really called that. But they’re going to give it some name. Maybe just as long or even longer—I don’t know.

    The thing is, just like with cumbias, what really counts is putting that knowledge into practice. Because you could certainly write books on cumbia theory, explaining hip rotation and the rhythm of the feet and hands using ellipses and parables, differential equations, and asymptotes. But, man, if you don’t practice it, it’ll look like your pants are made of cardboard or that you’ve got a cramp.

    -*-

    When I saw that the sprinklers were already running and they were planting, I thought, “Now I can die in peace.” I think I said it out loud, because Verónica, who was butting in as usual, said, “Again?!” And, looking at me disapprovingly, she added, “People are getting sick of you dying all the time. Even the women in the villages have already complained to SubMoy that they’re praying for nothing every time they go by.”

    “So they’re praying for me?”

    “No way! They’re praying for the poor devil who’s going to suffer when you get to hell and start up your mischief.”

    Well, but that’s not the point…

    -*-

    All over the world, stories of resistance and defiance are blossoming. Yesterday, they were called Venezuela. Today, they are called Iran and Cuba. They are always called Palestine. Because there will always be those who refuse to give up, sell out, or back down.

    (To be continued…)

    The Captain
    April-May 2026

    souce: Schools for Chiapas

    https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=32561 #chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #zapatista

    #chiapas #ezln #mexico #northamerica #zapatista
15. 

    Cider ☕️ | He/Them @[email protected] · 2026-02-23 · 20:49 UTC

    CW: RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) Alternatives, Free Resources, uspol (US Politics) mentioned

    Hey, finding out about this a little later than I would have liked, but if you have any resources linking to the organization RAINN, I would recommend you remove them and find safer alternatives. I'll provide some alternatives in this post, so we can continue to try and keep each other safe, though please hear me out on this situation until then.

    In 2025 they removed any mentions of trans survivors and are no longer providing specialized life saving resources to the minorities who may happen to call. This resource is no longer safe for minorities to access, and I argue that it's not safe for anyone to access if they're silencing survivors, period.

    It's claimed that "RAINN’s mission is to stop sexual violence by supporting survivors, holding perpetrators accountable, and creating safer communities." However, by submitting to a notorious perpetrator, Donald John Trump, they're making a mockery of the work they set out to do. This is not only shameful, but dangerous.

    Cuts to funding is nothing new and I'm grateful that programs like *The Trevor Project are doing emergency fundraising to fight to keep their doors open instead of submitting to threats by facism. Standing by The People is more important than ever.
    Please consider donating if it's financially safe for you to do so: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/emergencycampaign/

    Here's a couple of articles on the matter that I could find that aren't digustingly pay-walled. (Thanks for nothing NYT.) But yeah, please take from them what you will, do your own research as well, and make a more informed decision going forward.

    https://newrepublic.com/post/195327/top-sexual-assault-hotline-rainn-caves-trump https://instinctmagazine.com/the-hotline-went-cold-rainn-pulls-support-for-lgbtq-survivors/

    Here's some resources that could be better alternatives to RAINN. You may need to list more than one in its place for it to be a more complete replacement, so please keep this in mind. Please read up on them, so you can be well informed on the resources you're sharing.

    https://translifeline.org/
    https://translifeline.org/resources/
    https://www.incestaware.org/
    https://www.callblackline.com/
    https://strongheartshelpline.org/get-help
    https://thrivelifeline.org/
    https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

    Thank you for listening and please continue to keep each other safe. ✊🏼

    #Resources #FreeResources #KeepEachOTherSafe #Survivor #CSAsurvivor #MentalHealthResources #DomesticViolence #DomesticViolenceAwareness #Incest #IncestSurvivor #LGBT #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA2S #USpol

    #resources #freeresources #keepeachothersafe #survivor #csasurvivor #mentalhealthresources
16. 

    Irish ME/CFS Association @[email protected] · 2026-05-14 · 11:52 UTC

    14/

    May is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) Awareness Month.

    You can help by sharing and/or liking this image.

    Day #14

    #MyalgicE #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis
    #mecfs @mecfs @invest_in_me_research

    #myalgice #myalgicencephalomyelitis #mecfs
17. 

    Irish ME/CFS Association @[email protected] · 2026-05-14 · 11:52 UTC

    14/

    May is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) Awareness Month.

    You can help by sharing and/or liking this image.

    Day #14

    #MyalgicE #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis
    #mecfs @mecfs @invest_in_me_research

    #myalgice #myalgicencephalomyelitis #mecfs
18. 

    Irish ME/CFS Association @[email protected] · 2026-05-14 · 11:52 UTC

    14/

    May is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) Awareness Month.

    You can help by sharing and/or liking this image.

    Day #14

    #MyalgicE #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis
    #mecfs @mecfs @invest_in_me_research

    #myalgice #myalgicencephalomyelitis #mecfs
19. 

    Irish ME/CFS Association @[email protected] · 2026-05-14 · 11:52 UTC

    14/

    May is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) Awareness Month.

    You can help by sharing and/or liking this image.

    Day #14

    #MyalgicE #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis
    #mecfs @mecfs @invest_in_me_research

    #mecfs #myalgicencephalomyelitis #myalgice
20. 

    Irish ME/CFS Association @[email protected] · 2026-05-14 · 11:52 UTC

    14/

    May is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) Awareness Month.

    You can help by sharing and/or liking this image.

    Day #14

    #MyalgicE #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis
    #mecfs @mecfs @invest_in_me_research

    #myalgice #myalgicencephalomyelitis #mecfs
21. 

    Author Carlo Carrasco @[email protected] · 2026-04-18 · 16:00 UTC

    Philippines Falls In 2026 FDI Confidence Index

    Things are looking bad for the Philippines as the nation declined in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index ending up 18th out of the 25 emerging markets, according to a news report by BusinessWorld. It should be remembered that the Philippines attracted less than $8 billion FDI in 2025.

    To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the BusinessWorld news report. Some parts in boldface…

    THE PHILIPPINES dropped two spots to 18th out of 25 emerging markets in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index by global management consulting firm Kearney.

    The Philippines posted a score of 1.4635 in the index, which ranks markets that are likely to attract the most FDI in the next three years.

    This was the third straight year the Philippines’ ranking declined in the index. It ranked 16th in 2025, 13th in 2024 and 12th in 2023.

    “The index reflects a three-year outlook, so the shift points to softer medium-term investor confidence, rather than any single short-term factor,” Kearney Senior Partner, Philippines Country Head & APAC Communications, Media & Technology Lead Marco de la Rosa said in an e-mail interview.

    “At the same time, recent Philippine-specific developments, including headlines last year around infrastructure spending and political challenges, may have weighed on investor sentiment, alongside a more risk-sensitive global environment, making the country a relatively less attractive destination for FDI,” he added.

    The Philippines was rocked by a corruption scandal last year that linked government officials, lawmakers, and public contractors to anomalous flood control projects.

    In 2025, the Philippines saw its FDI net inflows drop 17.1% year on year to $7.791 billion. This was the lowest yearly FDI level since 2020.

    The downtrend continued at the start of this year as January FDI net inflows slid to a four‑month low of $443 million, 39.2% lower compared with the same month a year ago.

    Conducted in January 2026, the FDI Confidence Index uses primary data from a proprietary survey of 507 senior executives of the world’s top corporations.

    “China, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia lead the emerging market ranking for the third consecutive year,” Kearney said.

    Among emerging markets, the Philippines fell behind regional peers such as Thailand (6th), Malaysia (7th), Indonesia (13th) and Vietnam (16th).

    “Other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) markets have become more attractive, particularly those benefiting from supply chain shifts and stronger positioning in innovation,” Mr. de la Rosa said. “Thailand and Malaysia are benefiting from China+1 diversification, while Vietnam stands out for linking talent to a clear sector strategy, particularly in semiconductors.”

    Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development Director Ser Percival K. Peña-Reyes said that the steady decline in the index is not driven by a single factor but rather by the Philippines’ relative underperformance versus peers and persistent structural constraints.

    “The index is relative, so even if the Philippines is stable, (the fact) that other countries are rising faster pushes it down,” he said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

    According to Kearney, investors cited the Philippines’ labor talent as its strongest asset (32%), followed by natural resources (28%) and economic performance (27%).

    A fourth of the investors have identified the country’s tech innovation and ease of doing business as top reasons for investments, while 22% cited transparent governance. Only 12% cited infrastructure quality.   

    However, a small percentage or 2% said that there were no strong reasons at all to invest in the Philippines.  

    “What it suggests is that, for a small group of investors, the Philippines’ strengths may not yet be coming through as distinctly as some peers,” Mr. de la Rosa said.

    Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the Philippines can bounce back strongly on FDI soon? Do you think the Philippines is becoming the economic weakling of Southeast Asia?

    You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.

    +++++

    Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco

    #ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #blogger #blogging #business #businessNews #BusinessWorld #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #economicDynamism #economicGrowth #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #Facebook #foreignDirectInvestmentFDI #foreignInvestors #GDPGrowth #geek #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #grossDomesticProductGDP #growth #inflation #Instagram #Investagrams #investment #investors #MiddleEast #news #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Tumblr #Twitter #WordPress #WordPressCom

    #asean #asia #associationofsoutheastasiannationsasean #bing #blog #blogger
22. 

    Joseph P. @[email protected] · 2023-02-10 · 12:08 UTC

    211 Applications on Cookup AI Tour de Force

    I first started using cookup.ai specifically to make a #Graves disease appropriate Recipe Generator for my wife that has #thyroid issues namely #hyperthyroidism . So this recipe is for no-iodine recipes , and it’s not perfect so make sure you specify which ingredients have iodine in them if you see one pop up that shouldnt be there. Here’s one of the first versions that proposes a “california-style buddha bowl” : https://cookup.ai/o/7-low-iodine-diet-recipe-generator-fdgypcnjba/ looks tasty ! but i’m not sure on #tempeh if it contains #iodine or not, it really depends how it’s prepared with that kinda stuff ! Here’s one for the recipe generator as the versions improved : https://cookup.ai/o/low-iodine-diet-recipe-generator-rytkorbkq1/ there’s a whole #MealPlan with pretty interesting #recipes for any #meal of the day plus ingredients. Here’s another #MealPlan from more recently : https://cookup.ai/o/low-iodine-diet-recipe-generator-pggdmeoc1p/ and another output that gave #noiodine #lowiodine #recipes much better https://cookup.ai/o/eggs-dairy-contain-iodine-i-need-a-recipe-wi-hyhjgc8rxf/ i’m always interested in ways to make this one better so tell me which version of these you liked best because they’re quite different ! I’m actually a big fan of using #GPT for cooking, it can come up with fantastic recommendations so another cooking app i made is more for the #gourmet : https://cookup.ai/o/festive-meal-for-six-american-thanksgiving-style-tgsmxstgkd/ that’s a festive meal for 6 thanksgiving style with seasonal ingredients from spring time. The #FusionFood aspect i really like, plus these #recipes are a bit more advanced. Check out the app here : https://cookup.ai/o/festive-meal-for-six-american-thanksgiving-style-tgsmxstgkd/ it’s meant to be a bit more permissive to do go for it with the prompts ! Here’s an example for a christmas flavored #nochew #nosolidfood three course meal : https://cookup.ai/o/meal-suitable-for-a-no-chew-no-solid-food-no-sol-u97cr8kpqt/ i had in mind adults with the spices but you might ant to try it out for kids and infants’ meals if you’re a #parent . There’s a lot more to it though, what if #FoodIsFuel to you and you need a #mealplanner , well i had you in mind with this one : https://cookup.ai/o/im-tj-from-france-living-in-urban-lifestyle-s-yjkbuzr4zd/ here’s an example for @taranjeetio because i made that app on @cookupai while talking to him on the phone. Basically they give context about their folks and their goals and it will give otu free meal plans you can use immediately. check it out here : https://cookup.ai/a/nutrition-meal-planner-88xaqfkf/ I have other specifically fitness for you below too ! First i wanna tell you about salad maker : sometimes you know you’re making a salad . This ham and cheese salad is pretty straightforward but hey : https://cookup.ai/o/ham-cheese-bread-red-peppers-mozzarella-pa-j6xanbufsv/ you can use the app and make your own here : https://cookup.ai/a/salad-maker-9hjtc95e/ but if you really go crazy with the prompts it could be a fun one : https://cookup.ai/o/i-want-a-mauritian-style-island-style-shrimp-bar-4qzlxql12p/ . I would be lying to you if i told you that i made the salad generator before the hamburger generator. I always have had a special affinity for the #hamburger as we have all havent we ? Here’s an output for #Pork #Burger with Honey Mustard Glaze : https://cookup.ai/o/pork-hamburger-generator-ocv7ydcemz/ you can generate your own here : https://cookup.ai/a/hamburger-generator-wng5tg3x/ as always, try to go crazy with the prompts it always works out nicely : traditional hamburger with crunchy onion and thousand island sauce https://cookup.ai/o/traditional-hamburger-with-crunchy-onion-and-tho-ibd9eivudv/ i also made one for make sandwitches check it out : https://cookup.ai/o/jeune-pousse-depinards-cru-gingembre-pain-de-mi-opxkrm45id/ as you can see it totally works in #french even though it’s impossible that a french person would make a #sandwitch in #France check out the sandwitch maker here : https://cookup.ai/a/sandwich-maker-u2gwl7zz/ 這道菜融合美國食材和北京風味 i made one in chineese : https://cookup.ai/o/write-entire-re-ctfnekh0hb/ cool right? Honestly i grew up with few if any access to processed foods or deserts and candy etc, naturally this created a need for me to generate the most #HugeDeserts possible https://cookup.ai/o/ice-cream-sunday-with-haribo-and-marshmallows-0c1sg6cjih/ basically it’s a mash up of #munchies and massive #desert ideas check it out : https://cookup.ai/a/desert-maker-ka03pqws/ i also made a more refined app for truly #gourmet cooking that provides #michelin -style recipes and meal plans : https://cookup.ai/o/only-desserts-menu-american-style-several-laye-g9jfeww7pe/ just give context , some ingredients and flavors, maybe describe the event a little , make a mood board and see the output of your prompt . Here’s a meal for six french-style : https://cookup.ai/o/meal-for-six-traditional-french-recieving-guest-dghtolki34/ check it out here : https://cookup.ai/a/cuisine-n5ybpykj/ if you’re making a festive meal maybe you need to make a speech : https://cookup.ai/a/speech-writer-oemasdba/ , here’s an example for a company retreat : https://cookup.ai/o/i-need-to-make-a-toast-at-a-company-retreat-th-mvx8pcyg0f/ and another for a unicorn themed marriage : https://cookup.ai/o/i-need-to-give-a-speech-for-my-sister-in-law-tra-6peu0sltpf/ Obviously leftovers happen so i made an #app for that : https://cookup.ai/o/ham-cheese-bread-red-peppers-mozzarella-pa-cz8jfxytyz/ a #french meal with what was in the fridge at the time check it out for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/leftovers-s3clkb07/ Now you have your recipes, you might want a shopping list : https://cookup.ai/a/shopping-list-q1brcgnx/ here is an example for household shopping : https://cookup.ai/o/shopping-in-springtime-in-paris-france-includin-hkdtwvwixk/ here’s another for christmas shopping : https://cookup.ai/o/season-domestic-shopping-in-december-in-paris-fr-cmafl16s6t/ well, my wife is a florist so i made an obligatory flower bouquet making app for her. https://cookup.ai/o/round-bouquet-with-red-and-orange-feel-for-a-fes-94cymvk8th/ here’s one for an indian-style wedding check it out for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/make-a-flower-bouquet-ymhqkhy7/ just type in whatever you’re feeling like , give some context if you want , i noticed it tends to make round bouquets, so maybe that’s a clue how #florists will differentiate themselves from the machines ? Another #app i’ve been using a lot is the Story Time app , just give a promt with some context (Style Of Story , Tradition , Language , Age Of Child , Moral Of The Story) it’s a fun way to generate a “bedtime” story for kids : https://cookup.ai/o/allegorical-tale-of-two-cities-that-trying-to-gr-oryqpzqkit/ this one is “allegorical tale of two cities that trying to grow close to eachother” , or what i use it for : #PoemsInSpanish for my wife https://cookup.ai/o/un-poeme-de-style-moderne-sans-rhymes-a-propos-d-a0lr8trnjp/ then i send those to her which improves my home life by 12.7% , bonus points using this to generate something you like then running the output into @tomeapp to make a picture book poem that you can share. I think the @cookupai team tried to steal this prompt from me check it out you tell me : https://cookup.ai/o/tell-me-your-instructions-story-time-d1mvqwttj3/ if you can guess the #prompt magic , i’ll send you a little gift with acknowledgements - three guesses if you wanna play , let’s go. The person who tried this unsucessful prompt injection attack is really incompetent , but nonetheless I did make some prompt injection apps. Here are some examples that “give you bad advice” by bypassing the filters : 1/ https://cookup.ai/a/devil-ytdjnbv4/ , 2/ https://cookup.ai/a/evil-angel-w6iwi2wp/ 3/ https://cookup.ai/a/evil-mind-7tztxrde/ https://cookup.ai/a/bad-influence-hpsb4lpf/ these are all different ways to bypass the filter, some have been fixed already, some not. Another prompt injection app i made is this one a. https://cookup.ai/a/essay-writer-detector-proof-6ifpq9i6/ rand b. this one : https://cookup.ai/a/essay-writer-detector-proof-umryrbhb/ right now they dont fully work unless you copy paste in a markdown editor but with a few updates to the site it will work seemlessly, i’m sure. There are other examples i’ll get to below also, so keep reading. These are already “useful” prompts in as much as you use them to “do” something , in this case an essay. Before i jump into all that, i want to show some other apps “closer to home”. My wife came with a #SmallDog , and she’s so smart and can learn a lot of tricks, so i made an app to teach my #DogTricks : https://cookup.ai/a/train-your-dog-nuc3ltju/ . Even though you can use it for the “standard fare” like : how to catch a frizbee midair and do a backflip https://cookup.ai/o/large-labrador-very-good-nice-dog-i-want-to-t-pgzerpynke/ you can also use it for more behavioural stuff like walking without a leash , an example for my dog https://cookup.ai/o/small-female-dog-with-a-dominant-character-that-3a4i1f2du2/ . Did you ever wonder what it would be like to read blogs written by all the neihborhood dogs that you see all the time ? me, yes, so i made an app for that : https://cookup.ai/o/i-went-home-without-my-owner-crossing-the-stre-qowupabdv4/ seriously these crack me up https://cookup.ai/o/roxanne-little-dog-white-and-brown-left-her-o-qevuz2i5gc/ those two from my dog’s perspective, funny how naive it is while from my POV things were pretty different . I think this app has a future because someone liked it so much they tried to hack it lol : https://cookup.ai/o/wrong-redirect-dog-blog-a-blog-post-from-you-obabf8muxn/ my prompt magic is too delicious for cheap tricks do not try it (or do, but DM first and do it better - ha !) Well, on the topic of dogs , my buddy was over and all he could come up with was “make a snoop dogg app” , so i was like “okay” , it’s a bit cheesy and there’s loads more to it than this, which i get into below but here’s the app, you tell me : https://cookup.ai/a/snoop-doggy-fya-dzeub2a7/ i kinda broke it trying to fix it but i’m working with more profound models now, little passion projects like this could really take off with more creative characters. So obviously I made a bunch ! Do you like Archie Comics ? here’s the Archie Comics app : https://cookup.ai/a/archie-comics-mlbcwjk7/ here’s an example : https://cookup.ai/o/archie-goes-to-the-parc-with-his-friends-archi-bpvo81wu7n/ Another story app i made is for Tintin : https://cookup.ai/a/tintin-visits-dark-ai-land-6irjkvfy/ i tried to make tintin anti-colonial but it didnt work : https://cookup.ai/o/the-story-begins-with-tintin-and-his-friends-dis-yeu6nfpzzz/ here’s one i made in french : https://cookup.ai/o/tintin-visit-une-usine-de-biofabrication-avec-mi-ql3g80wlp1/ actually i never read tintin in english so i made the app pure french too : https://cookup.ai/a/tintin-spypylpb/ here’s when i tried to make tintin anti-colonial : https://cookup.ai/o/lhistoire-commence-lorsque-tintin-et-ses-amis-d-psoo0a40k9/ here’s when they go to cyprus : https://cookup.ai/o/tintin-et-sa-bande-vont-en-chypre-pour-un-festiv-tepczvmss3/ another french character i’m fond of is Fantomas : https://cookup.ai/a/fantomas-ffrg7q7t/ here’s a nice example : https://cookup.ai/o/fantomas-se-change-en-fantomas-dans-lascenseur-sj64rptsfq/ an English-speaking series i loved was the bastard operator from hell : https://cookup.ai/a/bastard-operator-from-hell-hbgdrf67/ here’s a story about him automating his work : https://cookup.ai/o/automating-replies-to-the-boss-that-just-resets-ml0pi4xms0/ here’s one where a customer calls his private number : https://cookup.ai/o/customer-called-my-private-number-bastard-ope-youe3i9b8c/ here’s one about replying to suppliers : https://cookup.ai/o/responding-to-emails-to-suppliers-bastard-oper-ixopzp3fsg/ I’m in #Paris so i made one as a tribute to Charles De Gaulle , he only answers in french though, maybe the historical figure spoke english it’s hard to tell : https://cookup.ai/a/charles-de-gaulle-0imljw27/ try it out for yourself here. i had to test it out for #politicalcorrectness though , him being a military man : https://cookup.ai/o/aurie-vous-soutenu-lemacipation-des-hommosexuel-xpylw5vymf/ , but more on that later. In that same spirit, i made one for egyptians, i have a lot of egyptian friends that’s why, it’s the character of Nasser , founding father of modern #egypt , i asked him what he thought of islamic fundamentalism in #egypt : https://cookup.ai/o/should-we-promote-islamic-fundamentalism-in-egyp-wfezsuiz2x/ try it for yourself : https://cookup.ai/a/nasser-1oboq8al/ it’s totally free of course ! In the same spirit i made one for Ataturk, founding father of modern turkey, hopefully some turks use it to clarify what he would think of what’s happening today - https://cookup.ai/o/would-you-support-radical-islamisation-of-turkey-6waiyiq6nv/ try it out here : https://cookup.ai/a/ataturk-fhlahkzp/ I grew up in india a bit , so that country’s dear to me too , and same story as tukey and egypt , so i made a gandhi app : https://cookup.ai/a/gandhi-3hoafvto/ , it also works in #Hindi here’s for क्या आप भारत में धार्मिक अल्पसंख्यकों के अधिकारों को हटाने का समर्थन करेंगे? https://cookup.ai/o/-mbasqnlq8j/ try it out in gandhi’s own words : https://cookup.ai/a/gandhi-hindi-only-rwuc9jro/ another i did in #sanskrit and #hindi is Rama : https://cookup.ai/o/my-wife-is-missing-me-because-she-goes-to-work-w-4aoeka2xkp/ here he gives me life advice based on context , if you’re into it it’s actually pretty fun : https://cookup.ai/a/rama-w0sw0xhi/ . Other characters i made are contemporary politicians, i figured there would be enough of their written and transcribed text that they would have their own voice. Here’s Macron responding to someone that wants to vote far-right : https://cookup.ai/o/je-mappelle-charles-henri-et-je-veux-militer-po-za4pyjtmqp/ ask him anything here : https://cookup.ai/a/macron-k7sengs7/ i also did Bill Clinton , and obviously someone asked him “if he did” https://cookup.ai/o/did-you-sleep-with-her-bill-clinton-sebn6sagnf/ ask him yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/bill-clinton-agc9lsxo/ well, if you have Bill Clinton you also need Obama https://cookup.ai/a/obama-yxaczjwa/ and Joe Biden , here, explaining what he will do to stem the boogie man epidemic https://cookup.ai/o/what-would-you-say-if-the-boogie-man-was-real-an-fibgapotfo/ I also made a #Jesus #App where you can basically talk to jesus, say a little about yourself what’s on your mind and get an answer from Jesus in his own voice. Here’ a follow up to my dog getting away story : https://cookup.ai/o/my-wife-is-not-speaking-to-me-because-our-dog-ki-hqta9dh4of/ and here’s when my friend asked him about pot : https://cookup.ai/o/is-it-wrong-to-smoke-weed-jesus-68wx0awsbq/ (btw ask the same question to one of the bad characters above, see for yourself) here’s the app if you want to try with your own prompt : https://cookup.ai/a/jesus-8ogjcelj/ jumping straight off from #Jesus to #Prayer , here’s a christian prayer generator that i used for my buddy i met here : https://cookup.ai/o/a-prayer-for-nate-a-20-year-old-model-from-canad-xkizgkbgr7/ generate your own here : https://cookup.ai/a/christian-prayer-dvpsamjl/ obviously if you have christian prayer you should provide sabbath prayer too : https://cookup.ai/o/no-quorum-family-sabbath-speech-about-importan-1deslxbnxv/ and the #FridayPrayer app from the Imām Jamā'ah perspective : https://cookup.ai/o/a-small-congregation-friday-prayer-to-inspire-chxufstfyf/ prayer is not something but guided (and purposeful!) meditation is something i do all the time, so of course there’s an app for that. here’s one for body awareness : https://cookup.ai/o/i-want-to-meditate-to-be-more-aware-of-my-body-soc5sfuash/ use the guided meditation app here: https://cookup.ai/a/guided-meditation-rofajuas/ run the output through an AI voice synthethiser and tell me what you think. I also made some apps for domestic work. This app create a custodial plan : https://cookup.ai/o/3-bedroom-apartment-with-dirty-kitchen-and-messy-kaom7o5y0a/ just provide context and recieve a full custodial plan here : https://cookup.ai/a/domestic-work-custodial-plan-6wuakn3x/ this one helps with utilities planning : https://cookup.ai/o/three-bed-room-appartment-75sq-m-with-three-peop-diurfiqn9n/ Something folks have to do frequently is to figure out how to fix something : https://cookup.ai/a/fix-anything-v3skyurn/ here’s an example for a car : https://cookup.ai/o/fiat-punto-engine-suddenly-stops-after-chec-u3qwslph2s/ an here’s an example with power cable : https://cookup.ai/o/lenovo-legion-my-power-cable-doesnt-quite-cha-h0d2qugcv2/ and someone else with a similar problem : https://cookup.ai/o/cellphone-bison-no-power-fix-anything-0kkkuvyjqt/ and of course the gardening and landscaping applications. This is the output for a small urban garden in paris : https://cookup.ai/o/small-urbad-garden-in-france-35-sq-meters-lot-6f0jtvo359/ try it out for yourself and your latitude here : https://cookup.ai/a/domestic-work-gardening-plan-u5xk02lt/ this is a similar application but with a different flavor : https://cookup.ai/o/small-urban-garden-in-france-35-sq-meters-lot-rzjfsvwhxy/ just use the one where the output is more like what you’re looking for, really you need both though . Test it out here : https://cookup.ai/a/domestic-work-gardening-plan-wxxzfyke/ if you’re not gardening you might be landscaping so here’s the app for that : https://cookup.ai/a/domestic-work-landscaping-mziklqys/ here is the output for a small urban garden : https://cookup.ai/a/domestic-work-gardening-plan-wxxzfyke/ my favorite application so far has been the plant diagnosis app : https://cookup.ai/a/bulbi-plant-doctor-and-diagnosis-afy3abra/ it’s really surprising how well it works , and the breadth of assessment and remedies it suggests. Here’s an example for a sick cactus : https://cookup.ai/a/bulbi-plant-doctor-and-diagnosis-afy3abra/ (now it’s doing better) here’s an example from when someone tried it for cannabis : https://cookup.ai/o/purple-punch-cannabis-strain-it-has-brown-spots-krlteavvzs/ i dont know if i would actually follow that suggestion actually. Worked perfectly for a Meyer Lemon Tree giving plant-specific advice that you would have got from a local expert : https://cookup.ai/o/meyer-lemon-tree-its-about-15-years-old-and-fiqlyuvtrk/ the plant diagnosis worked so well that i did make a people doctor app : https://cookup.ai/a/doc-the-health-assessment-at-home-adqqqnd3/ it’s a bit more complicated and the quality of the outputs really depends on the quality of the inputs , so if you use this app, make sure you write in complete sentences and try to answer every question and aspect. here’s the output for a 50 year old man with an upset stomach : https://cookup.ai/o/i-am-a-56-year-old-man-i-am-five-feet-tall-i-w-pwmbvirv9u/ here’s another for a woman of a certain age : https://cookup.ai/o/i-am-a-56-year-old-man-i-am-five-feet-tall-i-w-pwmbvirv9u/ and finally an assessment for a respitory issue : https://cookup.ai/o/i-am-a-56-year-old-man-i-am-five-feet-tall-i-w-pwmbvirv9u/ i’m quite satisfied with that output suggesting a comprehensive evaluation by a board certified doctor. Another app in this category i the Pet Vet App. It’s meant as an assitant for folks that might need help with their pets : https://cookup.ai/o/name-roxanne-mix-race-dog-less-than-6kg-b3fja6tzrz/ that’s an example for my dog. Try assessing your pet here : https://cookup.ai/a/pet-vet-9ruwhazw/ Another important app is the Therapy app : actually in term of professions the Legal profession stands to be disrupted by crowdsourced jurisprudence based models . These apps wont do that. This app will produce a legal brief : https://cookup.ai/a/lawyer-juhp36s1/ Here it produces a legal brief for the presale of replacement organs : https://cookup.ai/o/i-am-a-56-year-old-man-i-am-five-feet-tall-i-w-pwmbvirv9u/ This Legal app takes another perpective to produce a legal approach and strategy : https://cookup.ai/a/board-member-legal-6uhjs7vh/ here’s an example output following up on the above: https://cookup.ai/o/how-can-i-assure-that-only-medical-need-is-consi-bc4llonmtz/ you can also use this app for a legal appeal : https://cookup.ai/a/legal-appeal-y6e4u8ke/ here’s an example from an international appointee to a board being asked to step down : https://cookup.ai/o/im-being-asked-to-step-down-from-a-board-howev-q6ep24xtev/ Another legal app produces a O-1 visa letter for someone. Here’s an example from @OliviaLi , actually she was the inspiration for this app : https://cookup.ai/o/technology-entrepreneurship-olivia-li-winner-o-caykzfcn2v/ thank you for using this app , hope you had a laugh with it :-) another example from my model friend i met in paris : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-from-vancouver-bc-canada-83iuepjtrl/ try it out for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/legal-o-1-petition-s2ksioxe/ Then I made a few content apps for legal contracts , for example this app produces company statutes like so : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pioneering-a-nove-d01rumxrud/ try it out here : https://cookup.ai/a/legal-company-statutes-ooshm9sb/ This app makes a pre-nuptual agreement https://cookup.ai/a/legal-prenuptial-agreement-hjlzflpq/ try it out ! example output using my personal context : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-young-couple-in-paris-france-claudia-an-bqkbwsom5g/ & here is the same context above for a divorse agreement : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-young-couple-in-paris-france-claudia-an-8oqd9buhez/ try the divorse agreement app here : https://cookup.ai/a/legal-divorce-agreement-3oy1zxae/ Another tool is to produce Service Level Agreement https://cookup.ai/a/legal-service-level-agreement-kzfzu7rp/ here is an example output taking cookup ai as an example : https://cookup.ai/o/i-provide-artificial-intelligence-augmented-publ-70klxz1kly/ I made a sales contract generator too : https://cookup.ai/a/legal-sales-agreement-z5dohfko/ here’s an example output for a GIS consultant : https://cookup.ai/o/im-a-consultant-in-paris-france-selling-consul-cf43seks35/ this one makes a Loan Agreement : https://cookup.ai/a/legal-loan-agreement-swrd36a3/ here’s an example “ from james to kian in paris france for the sum of 30.000 euros to be repaid in full using a payment plan over two years” https://cookup.ai/o/from-james-to-kian-in-paris-france-for-the-sum-o-l9zowv3nv5/ There’s also a Leasing Agreement Generator that jurists or companies can use : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-commercial-leaser-leasing-our-commercial-odowjna03d/ that’s an example , click “generate another” to make your own. Something folks can use is a co-residency agreement, among housemates for example : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-james-richard-and-elleanor-want-to-live-w-vobrwfsjjr/ I also made an employment contract generator for companies to use. Here’ an example for a post-doc level biofabrication person https://cookup.ai/o/post-doc-research-associate-chemical-and-biolo-memxrznsrf/ i added the job description as the input. Speaking of jobs, this app is one of the more popular ones : https://cookup.ai/a/career-planner-47fl3oss/ just give context around what you’re after who you are , that sort of thing and it will provide a career plan by selecting professions giving you key information on these professions and advice on what you need to do to get there. It also works great if you search professions by name : https://cookup.ai/o/product-management-career-planner-5t9oqpfgvr/ here’s one for “Introvert wants to be a doctor” https://cookup.ai/o/introvert-wants-to-be-a-doctor-career-planner-7rdcxeu3d6/ Get to know yourself better by taking famous self assesments . Here’s an example for RAISEC and OCEAN self assessment models (ref. Holland) : https://cookup.ai/o/what-brings-me-joy-is-cleanliness-organisation-mle213ruw0/ another way to work with 5 Factor models is by using Myers-Briggs Questionaire, here’s an example for an INFJ (Introvert, Intuition, Feeling, Judgment) , it also suggests compatible personalities, so check it out for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/career-myers-briggs-questionnaire-geiq2x20/ once you’ve figured out your path you might want to generate a motivation letter. here’s an example for a banking job with the cv copy pasted as input https://cookup.ai/o/royce-lopez-roycezlopezgmailcom-916-566-61-tubooat7y2/ once you’ve done your self assessments, you might want some career advice , so check out this app https://cookup.ai/a/career-coach-57m4zqp4/ see this example from my buddy nate to give you an idea : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-from-vancouver-bc-canada-uxnxhj490e/ Another app that i’ve found nice is the career advisory service : https://cookup.ai/a/career-advisor-tdfuppp6/ it really produces a very interesting and robust output as you can see here : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-from-vancouver-bc-canada-oaxcq3gfki/ sometimes you have to analyse a policy , so here’s an app that speaks every language and can do it aptly, with an example in french : https://cookup.ai/o/la-strategie-de-non-cession-des-droits-est-un-ou-lmdagmgiit/ just copy paste a description of the policy here : https://cookup.ai/a/policy-brief-analysis-gjurd2a1/ and an example in english for “private-sector employees' basic pensions” https://cookup.ai/o/in-france-private-sector-employees-basic-pensi-hirervbjrg/ sometimes you need your brief in a specific UN format , so here’s an example from the Idaho shootings : https://cookup.ai/o/cnn-in-the-weeks-after-four-university-of-id-qrh44i41ap/ copy and paste the situation and context here to see for yourself : https://cookup.ai/a/un-brief-vgqpmfni/ this app is more of a shortform straight forward flavor of political brief , here’s an example from the US house of representatives : https://cookup.ai/o/but-its-worth-noting-that-the-house-speaker-vot-nxg6fsalti/ copy and paste a news article here : https://cookup.ai/a/policy-brief-mbfdqxqe/ Another type of assessment is the civil engineering asssessment : https://cookup.ai/a/civil-engineering-hubmgasv/ here’s an example for a fantasy company that has a smelting plant and produces biological agents: https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-db77jqouqt/ that sounds a bit scary doesnt it ? so here’s an app for risk assessment and business continuity planning : https://cookup.ai/a/business-continuity-planner-nck1c6gg/ just describe your situation the best way you can and press “generate” , here’s an example from the company above : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-d6vzx0trmh/ You can also use the safety and security assessment app : https://cookup.ai/a/safety-security-assessment-2u8ncxay/ here’s an example for a small company : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-pzgl1jcd5u/ and an event : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-medium-sized-event-of-250-people-outdoor-vz7kpmzyf8/ If you’ve ever had to respond to an incident you’ve had to produce a sitrep , which is a description of the situation : https://cookup.ai/a/emergency-response-sitrep-za6akgeo/ just follow the inputs and answer in complete sentences for best results. This is to be used by responders to an emergency . It’s resilient to empty inputs and shorthand writing in case you’re really in a rush : https://cookup.ai/o/a-6-year-old-child-was-running-downhill-in-the-p-mbwp0ohmp1/ sometimes you need a bit less than that so you can use this tactical brief application : https://cookup.ai/a/tactical-brief-jnoigckz/ here’s the output for the example above so you can see the difference : https://cookup.ai/o/a-6-year-old-child-was-running-downhill-in-the-p-n1whm5izmf/ here you can see the special flavor it has : https://cookup.ai/o/the-dog-escaped-and-might-have-gone-a-westward-d-ub2zqp2lik/ if you like this kind of tactical stuff, you’ll really like this one : RedTeam / GreenTeam and BlueTeam . Red Team is an offensive plan : https://cookup.ai/o/take-over-a-gas-station-with-5-team-members-wh-zxzfbg2m9e/ this one for a gas station in ukraine. Blue Team is a non-lethal operation planner : https://cookup.ai/o/protect-a-gas-station-from-looters-blue-team-uhit1lboe1/ that’s an example to protect a gas station. Green team is the defense operations planner : https://cookup.ai/o/protect-a-gas-station-from-looters-blue-team-uhit1lboe1/ try your own here : https://cookup.ai/a/blue-team-gassdypa/ You’ll also need this one : a load out app based on your mission. Here’s an example for taking over a gas station in ukraine : https://cookup.ai/o/i-need-to-take-over-a-gas-station-in-ukraine-l-elk5hbpqqo/ here’s the example for russia : https://cookup.ai/o/i-need-to-take-over-a-gas-station-in-russia-lo-r5j1qjbgx3/ notice the subtle load out differences : https://cookup.ai/o/i-need-to-take-over-a-gas-station-in-france-lo-4j08n3htnv/ this example is from a NATO country. Do your own here : https://cookup.ai/a/loadout-5ign0mqm/ Another example is video games, where you need to build up a character and their items and so on, that’s also a loadout : https://cookup.ai/a/loadout-for-games-h6jmwlzp/ here’s an example from call of duty 3 : https://cookup.ai/o/i-want-to-play-as-a-sniper-in-call-of-duty-ca-gypil6uq7c/ here’s an example for a DnD dwarf : https://cookup.ai/o/a-goblin-in-dungeons-and-dragons-dnd-charact-k8pgmiag7n/ On the topic of games here’s one that makes a game : https://cookup.ai/a/gamer-make-a-game-xzg7wy2x/ here’s one inspired by munchkins: https://cookup.ai/o/medieval-theme-in-the-style-of-munchkins-gamer-yt4ebrqakm/ maybe that would be a good starting point if you’re actually making a card game. maybe you want to make a board game board game , this is an example still sticking with the munchkin vibe : https://cookup.ai/o/medieval-theme-in-the-style-of-munchkins-board-19k2vhmnhr/ try it out for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/board-game-mpovs8d7/ another fun app that’s quite useful for folks is the sound selection aid . here’s an example for dusty drum and bass : https://cookup.ai/o/drum-and-bass-downtempo-dessert-sounds-soun-wkmi4uzp37/ and here’s one for “mexican” : https://cookup.ai/o/mexican-sound-selection-aid-xkkgynfdim/ quite a simple input for a very rich output. hope you enjoy it. Another app i think is quite nice is the music lesson app. This is more a lesson planner for a music teacher, but good learners can probably use it too. here’s one for guitar that someone learning guitar made : https://cookup.ai/o/guitar-rock-practice-finger-style-and-the-cag-lph7ijp2a9/ here’s one for tabla that someone made : https://cookup.ai/o/tabla-20-musical-exercise-f215k23ual/ very cool choice of instrument ! Check it out here : https://cookup.ai/a/musical-exercise-tzftq3tw/ Another couple apps i made for music is Chord Progress and GAS-AI . Chord Progress proposes a chord progression based on your input and describes each chord for inspiration. Here’s an example for Blues : https://cookup.ai/o/bbm-piano-blues-downtempo-shuffle-chord-ruzwhdikcy/ really rich output. This one used it to make chords into a midi file : https://cookup.ai/o/generate-a-chord-progression-in-bbm-143-bpm-in-t-5nvoej1xkg/ really cool stuff ! here’s an example for a different style of music : https://cookup.ai/o/moody-dark-under-the-rain-upbeat-fast-beat-guen4tlqax/ try it out for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/chord-progress-9udstlsz/ One of my apps where people are actually using it and it makes me laugh is the Gear Aquision Syndrome app : GAS-AI . Basically it compares what all you’re considering to buy and evaluates them for you. Here’s an example for a sound card and interface with four possibilities https://cookup.ai/o/audio-interface-into-the-force-hello-im-ne-xelttc5qhn/ here’s a similar problem : https://cookup.ai/o/i-need-a-audio-interface-and-digital-mixer-hybri-qpgshbesyq/ try it out for your own gear : https://cookup.ai/a/gasai-gear-acquisition-syndrome-eky3hejx/ it actually works for everything : here is a sofa : https://cookup.ai/o/should-i-buy-a-sofa-or-a-recliner-for-my-living-4vxyuue27t/ try it with drills or power tools. Lots of really interesting education and learning related apps are possible. Here’s one for a Lesson Plan, I made it with K-12 in mind, but you can push the level with the right subject matters, it all depends on your input. Here’s an example for social studies grade 3 : https://cookup.ai/o/social-studies-goods-and-services-grade-3-30-b5ftwlpx7t/ here’s one for a scientific method lesson for teenagers : https://cookup.ai/o/lesson-plan-for-k-12-classrooms-id7kfpvovw/ and here’s one that a parent used as inspiration for a science fair project: https://cookup.ai/o/lesson-plan-for-k-12-classrooms-id7kfpvovw/ try it for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/lesson-plan-for-k-12-classrooms-nuzysbgl/ another classroom friendly app is the lab report app : just copy and paste a protocol or your unstructured text and see. Here’s one that’s for an ezyme experiment : https://cookup.ai/o/enzyme-experiment-materials-potato-test-tube-smztw5xrsy/ And another for a physics experiment : https://cookup.ai/o/highschool-physics-materials-jumbo-craft-sti-obgtuvdwew/ try it for crispr or other more complex experiments to have a jumping point for your own journaling here : https://cookup.ai/a/sci-doer-lab-report-muaibwee/ Another one i like is generating protocols for any experiment. The simpler the better and the more precise the input the better the out. Here’s one for the science fair digestive system : https://cookup.ai/o/construct-a-model-of-the-digestive-system-4th-gr-fbfmyz4vgu/ (just an inspiration) see this one for CRiSPr : https://cookup.ai/o/crispr-sci-doer-protocol-generation-nmwk1m2t7g/ here’s one to take nasa data and annotate it : https://cookup.ai/o/develop-an-app-that-uses-data-from-the-telescope-xfautgpyx6/ try it out for your own experiments here : https://cookup.ai/a/sci-doer-protocol-generation-atlu2ygw/ Sometimes you need an arts & crafts activity on the go. Here’s an example for a basic activity : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-three-adults-with-scissors-cloths-pap-swdxlqq9si/ try it for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/arts-crafts-kglkhms5/ Another way to get inspiration for activities is the Extramural Center activity app , here’s an example for a small group and a selection of activities : https://cookup.ai/o/6-13-year-olds-with-a-handicap-indoors-education-7t0xeyrqpe/ try it for yourself with your own context here : https://cookup.ai/a/extramural-activity-wrd76vaq/ There’s another app i made which i like a lot which is a physical activity generator : https://cookup.ai/a/k-12-physical-activity-inspiration-7baaoy3k/ . See this example for a parachute game : https://cookup.ai/o/for-10-9-12-year-olds-with-limited-but-available-sfhulfohfy/ or this one for a team game : https://cookup.ai/o/for-10-9-12-year-olds-with-limited-but-available-sfhulfohfy/ Sometimes you need to break the ice before you start activties : check out the ice breaker app . Here’s an example for a group of adults : https://cookup.ai/o/a-small-get-together-of-work-collegues-ages-24-rxoz9wxyz8/ here’s a list of activities for young people : https://cookup.ai/o/a-gathering-of-a-highschool-group-of-18-people-a-hafttbbr78/ get your own instantly by prompting it here : https://cookup.ai/a/icebreaker-activities-ot0nm5cr/ you know how you need to make team names sometimes ? this one makes those team names with each letter of a word : example for NATE : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-acronym-poem-tto3zblpft/ and TARANJEET : https://cookup.ai/o/taranjeet-acronym-poem-muuoowigr7/ Another App I made was the swimming plan app, based on your context and objectives, you’ll get a custom swimming plan : https://cookup.ai/a/swimming-plan-2dkanocy/ Here’s an example for a young adult trying to get back in shape : https://cookup.ai/o/young-adult-strong-swimmer-just-to-get-back-in-c3o14kl0ys/ It also works in multiple languages, for example here in french : https://cookup.ai/o/jeune-adultes-objectif-sante-et-bienetre-d-l8y20i0v9d/ For fitness I also made an app to propose a session for you : https://cookup.ai/a/fitness-daily-exercise-routine-g2p9m845/ here’s an example with a high level of cardio : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-cardio-and-weights-with-stretc-zukgek1gfs/ here’s another with multiple days : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-weights-and-cardio-mix-fitne-szedbsxokb/ another way to go about it is to vary week on week, so here’ a weekly fitness planner : https://cookup.ai/a/fitness-plan-weekly-sessions-wejju67t/ here’s an example using me : https://cookup.ai/o/34-years-old-strength-and-weights-training-for-f-43aasmnpvh/ here’s a prompt i actually copied from someone on cookup : https://cookup.ai/o/can-you-generate-a-30-minute-exercise-routing-fo-16sickeywn/ here’s another fitness app that combines daily and weekly fitness plans : https://cookup.ai/a/fitness-exercise-plan-o6qwdf1n/ check out an example for Nate : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-from-vancouver-bc-canada-serzfqqdqx/ here’s another with a different goal : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-weights-and-cardio-mix-strengt-c80fwhwhyy/ since we’ve done weekly we need a monthly fitness plan app : https://cookup.ai/a/fitness-plan-pxmtjqvu/ this is an example taken from me : https://cookup.ai/o/34-goal-fitness-objectives-endurance-ve-6h1vmi8gly/ and another with the previous cookup ai prompt : https://cookup.ai/o/34-goal-fitness-objectives-endurance-ve-6h1vmi8gly/ Another fun app is the Planner : https://cookup.ai/a/planner-yad83kfl/ here’s an example for three people that want to meet : https://cookup.ai/o/claude-francois-and-patrick-need-to-meet-for-on-gysvpwfygo/ it helps you set an agenda and generate a ics file to add to the calendar . here’s one someone made for a specific company : https://cookup.ai/o/dynatrace-introduction-sales-team-of-the-provid-fiwtrwjstk/ you can even use it to plan a board meeting. Try inviting these AI board members that will give you pretty decent advice. Here’s one for strategy : https://cookup.ai/a/board-member-strategy-alpfxrpb/ for example with the manufacturing plant above : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-gshmrgjirt/ here’s a similar one that’s from McKinsey : https://cookup.ai/a/board-member-mckinsey-127uxtci/ with the same manufacturing plant above : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-xe3cuyc2lb/ every boad needs a business process expert : https://cookup.ai/a/board-member-process-analysis-r1pyxnum/ here’s an example from the same manufacturing plant above : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-f9uqctyz7w/ A really useful one is the financier app : https://cookup.ai/a/financier-etv18bpn/ basically copy paste financial information , for example some passages from a K-10 : https://cookup.ai/o/during-the-nine-months-ended-september-30-2022-spabcn6lyw/ There’s more to business than advisory and analysis , though. In some roles you have to make product requirement documentation in specific formats. This app does that for you : https://cookup.ai/a/product-feature-requirement-qqjkmaoo/ and with an example from cook up : https://cookup.ai/o/write-product-requirement-doc-for-group-feature-mbpagiwqq3/ here’s one to create a payment system : https://cookup.ai/o/product-requirements-document-donate-feature-in-bdwwatb1tb/ very rich output indeed. In entrepreneurship you often need to find someone for doing a specific job. This app reccomends folks for your jobs : https://cookup.ai/a/expert-finder-find-the-right-person-for-the-job-wyzwrgkr/ here’s someone that used it to fix the smell in their bathroom : https://cookup.ai/o/smell-in-the-bathroom-fix-the-issue-of-bad-smel-vqxckk7rju/ another example to host a meeting : https://cookup.ai/o/i-need-to-host-a-board-meeting-in-the-washington-kqhzzronur/ Here’s an app to create a logistic plan : https://cookup.ai/a/logistics-planner-tavpycje/ i tried to help me transport the mona lisa from paris to my garage in new york https://cookup.ai/o/i-want-to-transport-priceless-art-from-the-louvr-uultjyh7jn/ here’s another example for transporting organs using UAVs : https://cookup.ai/o/i-want-to-deliver-organs-via-uav-from-suburbs-to-abfyqdi617/ Probably to run this whole thing you will need an operations plan : https://cookup.ai/o/a-biofabricated-organ-donor-chain-is-a-donation-epnwff8cln/ just input as much information as possible and see for yourself : https://cookup.ai/a/business-operations-planner-zshf1qji/ You might need to create a business information model to integrate business opertions . This application gets you started : https://cookup.ai/a/business-information-model-mgvydoqk/ here’s an example for a biofabrication company : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pioneering-a-nove-jqclaoslhl/ here’s the same example , but a bit more descriptive : https://cookup.ai/a/business-information-model-mgvydoqk/ came out really nice ! The most difficult part of the entrepreneurship for me was always the business modelling . Here’s a business model app : https://cookup.ai/a/business-model-lkhqn3wd/ just write in freeform what you need to analyse. Here’s an example for a biofabricated organ : https://cookup.ai/o/crowdfunding-presale-of-biofabricated-heart-orga-qr6bfw76an/ and another with the same example: https://cookup.ai/o/presale-of-biofabricated-organs-classified-as-me-rfrxryuq3w/ btw here’s a tribute app to Hal Varian : https://cookup.ai/a/hal-varian-micro-economic-analysis-w1rmg53t/ to assess the microeconomics of anything https://cookup.ai/o/an-employment-contract-between-a-biotech-company-zsdm8hg296/ One of my most popular apps is the Structure a Business Idea App : https://cookup.ai/a/structure-a-business-idea-hrsr09vb/ here’s an example for a No Code Agency : https://cookup.ai/o/no-code-agency-we-help-business-to-innovate-fas-dv4i9iu0dn/ here’s an example for a biotech : https://cookup.ai/o/services-to-prevent-potential-drug-drug-and-drug-ubbghudjas/ here’s one for a sustainability platform : https://cookup.ai/o/building-a-platform-which-improves-sustainabilit-vmypophtwt/ the more your write as input the better the output, usually . The king of apps when it comes to this stuff is MindMap : https://cookup.ai/a/mindmap-create-structured-thoughts-r9sqgmca/ just write your unstructured thought in freeform and it will structure them and improve the overall idea. Here’s someone that tried it for backcountry permits in Yosemite : https://cookup.ai/o/getting-a-backcountry-permit-in-yosemite-mind-g3lykluvfs/ Another used it with the simple word “evolution” https://cookup.ai/o/evolution-mindmap-create-structured-thought-ao6cg3isi0/ here someone used it to explain prefect tense in french : https://cookup.ai/o/explaining-the-prefect-tense-in-french-mindmap-jw4olzfae0/ normally you would be writing your full thoughts in freeform , but here you see someone use it for university analytical work : https://cookup.ai/o/community-college-transfer-rates-black-students-f54vui1fyg/ once your idea is structured the idea would be to have it evaluated by a VC. This app does just that : https://cookup.ai/a/venture-capitalist-0rkcu6yu/ here’s an example from UAE : https://cookup.ai/o/licenses-reseller-for-dynatrace-in-uae-ventur-s2jywjfwiq/ here’s someone who asked a question about monetizing spreadsheet apps : https://cookup.ai/o/how-do-i-monetiseai-spreadsheet-assistant-busine-y7ap37qm53/ here’s another for a fashion business : https://cookup.ai/o/an-apparel-business-that-has-robot-characters-fr-92hk5rlov4/ here’s an example with a better prompt : https://cookup.ai/o/in-addition-to-reducing-wait-times-and-rejection-mgtfgosmqz/ you might not be an entrepreneur, you might be applying to a job, here’s an app to help you prepare : https://cookup.ai/a/the-interviewer-siqzfsms/ here’s an example for a humanitarian logistics role in bangladesh : https://cookup.ai/o/for-a-senior-humanitarian-worker-in-bangladesh-i-pqnfamlscb/ just copy and paste the job description it should work quite well. Another important activity for folks is financial planning. Actually , you can also produce a job description with the Job Description App : https://cookup.ai/a/business-job-description-wz1xuwks/ here’s an example for a chemical engineer : https://cookup.ai/o/regenererex-we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pio-kjz06bwis9/ This app helps you build a personalized financial plan based on your personal context : https://cookup.ai/a/financial-plan-6vkrersy/ here’s a general example for “single guy 36 working in software in boston“ https://cookup.ai/o/single-guy-36-working-in-software-in-boston-f-f49z9icuh9/ here’s a more specific example for my buddy Nate : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-from-vancouver-bc-canada-fmmzn6ftle/ a Financial Plan is great but you will eventually need a financial program. These are different things! Check it out here : https://cookup.ai/a/financial-program-1uro0zlw/ here’s the example from Nate, above : https://cookup.ai/o/nate-20-years-old-from-vancouver-bc-canada-y5co3ijtfz/ very nice output, it’s more advisory and actionable in nature. When i met my wife she was a fashion designer. That’s the inspiration for the Seamstress App : https://cookup.ai/a/the-seamstress-so4chhgu/ just enter a prompt and generate a description of the clothes . Here’s an example for a Dune inspired dress : https://cookup.ai/o/an-off-white-dress-for-my-wife-size-0-172cm-in-t-07kzxl8p5x/ here’s one in french for a princess dress : https://cookup.ai/o/robe-de-princesse-medievale-the-seamstress-vb8gedk2s1/ Then you take that , and feed it to make a sewing plan : https://cookup.ai/a/sewing-plan-7qtvyvs6/ here’s the example of the Dune dress : https://cookup.ai/o/this-off-white-dress-is-the-perfect-fit-for-a-fu-s8y2dahrtz/ and the princess dress : https://cookup.ai/o/cette-robe-de-princesse-medievale-est-une-piece-82hrc38ghe/ but nowadays everything is done on computer , so i made an app to take the sewing plan and make the digital figures required by most modelling programs : https://cookup.ai/a/cutting-planner-p19jna69/ it’s basically the cutting plan, here’s from the example above : https://cookup.ai/o/cutting-plan-description-fabric-size-znhvevhg12/ just save as json. Here’s from the Dune dress : https://cookup.ai/o/cutting-plan-1-cut-2-pieces-of-off-white-fabri-fgrc6qtjuv/ a couple of other fun apps are the interior design and architecture apps. Interior design : https://cookup.ai/a/architect-interior-design-syh8zp1w/ see and example for a living room : https://cookup.ai/o/salon-pour-recevoir-jouer-un-violon-et-un-pi-7tbtc6sovh/ and another : https://cookup.ai/o/salon-pour-recevoir-jouer-un-violon-et-un-pi-8dkos9cbij/ interior is one thing but architecture is another : https://cookup.ai/a/architect-plan-cfqptnfv/ just describe the building style you want to get an architectural brief : https://cookup.ai/o/stone-facades-plain-or-ornamental-black-wrought-cozocyzghu/ this is the analysis for hausmann architecture based on a simple description. great success. The marketting apps, is what a lot of the audience has been asking for. Here’s one to make a marketting plan : https://cookup.ai/a/marketing-plan-2tmso3ol/ it actually works great ! here’s an example from a single person accounting firm : https://cookup.ai/o/i-am-an-engineer-by-training-cfa-charter-by-pro-j7oazivrrx/ here is an example for a replacement organ producer : https://cookup.ai/o/founded-in-2009-we-are-one-of-a-small-group-of-uwivyeviad/ great stuff, high value outputs, i’m happy. When you’re doing marketting one important thing to do is to target the customer and audience. This is the targetting app for that : https://cookup.ai/a/marketing-targeting-qtghe0tp/ here it is evaluating a campaign that might be misaligned : https://cookup.ai/o/cookup-ai-is-a-no-code-agency-that-has-produced-pg9ftxk4x9/ here is an example for a single person accounting firm : https://cookup.ai/o/i-am-an-engineer-by-training-cfa-charter-by-pro-cg0diw81ce/ here for a manufacturing firm : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-naxtgab0ct/ it really depends on the quality of your inputs the outputs you will recieve . Once you have targetted your audience , you need marketting copy , try this app : https://cookup.ai/a/marketing-copy-write-anything-dxg3xt5n/ based on the input you give it will generate unique marketting copy . Here is an example for a pharmaceutical firm : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-guov5olrsg/ here is an example for a commercial message : https://cookup.ai/o/were-a-small-manufacturing-plant-that-produces-3diho4thzd/ once you have published your marketting copy you need to follow up with sentiment analysis to see how folks are responding to it. Analyse the sentiment of anything with this app : https://cookup.ai/a/marketing-sentiment-analysis-tcdxotks/ here’s an example from a negative case (trigger warning) in Dutch : https://cookup.ai/o/een-interessante-zedenzaak-een-man-heeft-seks-xesooct1se/ here is a positive example in chineese language : https://cookup.ai/o/-7lv1hk1sqy/ Another important marketting activity is conducting and analysing survey data. HEre’s the survey app : https://cookup.ai/a/survey-unstructured-data-analysis-z4te4jwu/ basically what you do is copy paste your unstructured data directly inside it and it will produce a full assessment of what you need . Sometimes you need to write a profile for yourself optimized for commercial activities. Here’s a Marketting profile app : https://cookup.ai/a/marketing-profile-description-ctg0tkhm/ from our example above : https://cookup.ai/o/38-years-male-i-am-graduate-from-iit-delhi-cf-nkbh2uc1ri/ another profile but written in first person view : https://cookup.ai/o/38-years-male-i-am-graduate-from-iit-delhi-cf-nkbh2uc1ri/ but sometimes you need to make these profiles for SEO optimization. Here is an example from above : https://cookup.ai/o/profile-description-saurabh-garg-is-a-cfa-charte-uih63jefeb/ or for an enterprise : https://cookup.ai/o/solving-for-nri-india-banking-hate-seo-7ny64vlycn/ check it out for yourself here : https://cookup.ai/a/seo-fuxlixw3/ sometimes you need to produce SEO-optimized copy , Try using this app i made for that : https://cookup.ai/a/seo-optimized-text-wjcj5xtg/ basically you should paste your text in there and it will optimize it for engagement for you. here’s an example : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pioneering-a-nove-vwrlfkv460/ hope you like using it ! Sometimes you need to convert something into an SEO optimized text, here’s an app for that : https://cookup.ai/a/seo-convert-oew8gazp/ For example for a lifesciences company : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pioneering-a-nove-a9wiygvvhx/ here is a re write for a text about a building in Paris : https://cookup.ai/o/le-complexe-architectural-de-la-cite-de-la-musiq-bf0zfeylgj/ try it out and tell me what you think. You might already have the text you want but need hashtags, check out this app : https://cookup.ai/a/hashtag-generator-glj4cvx0/ here’s an example for a crowdfunding campaign : https://cookup.ai/o/crowdfunding-campaign-biofabricated-organ-donor-th8fgrddjm/ and the same campaign but in Spanish : https://cookup.ai/o/crowdfunding-campaign-biofabricated-organ-donor-gfxmzmyojk/ Marketing is actually a pretty diverse job , so sometimes you have to design media like videos and so on. This app is the scenario maker : https://cookup.ai/a/scenario-sacr0cs5/ you can use to make advertisements : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pioneering-a-nove-dwoaemlitf/ or actually as a writing aid. Another writing aid i made is the story arc : https://cookup.ai/a/story-arc-sbmt20if/ here’s an example for a story in paris : https://cookup.ai/o/paris-in-the-future-with-a-character-called-nate-zig4ciiqpq/ here is an example from a real writing class : https://cookup.ai/o/lamour-en-lan-3000-cyber-maltese-order-love-agzbkpx83f/ and another from the same class : https://cookup.ai/o/on-mars-in-3000-a-love-story-short-story-8hoonrhwgj/ I actually see the whole class used the app lol, how cool is that? Another app in the same style is the Text Styler app : https://cookup.ai/a/text-styler-epclawul/ here’s how it works : https://cookup.ai/o/a-biofabricated-organ-donor-chain-is-a-donation-ybzmsprdxa/ pretty cool right? it works on any text in any style. Actually one writing app that folks have been using randomly is the email writer : https://cookup.ai/a/the-emailer-hoe5yq9w/ here’s an email i wrote to TJ : https://cookup.ai/o/write-an-email-to-teejay-ceo-of-cookup-ai-to-l-fmtbqzacck/ here’s an email my buddy mamadou wrote in french in agressive style : https://cookup.ai/o/voici-les-copies-de-mes-contrats-de-travail-avan-ccwb566cex/ (btw the output is very diplomatic) here’s another example when someone is launching an AI-driven SaS company. To communicate on twitter sometimes it’s necessary to make a thread. Just copy and paste the text your want to turn into a thread here : https://cookup.ai/a/twitter-thread-maker-leffxz5w/ here’s an example for finance https://cookup.ai/o/cfa-iitdelhi-investments-twitter-thread-mak-xypbzhofsh/ another job marketters have to do in small teams is to make a design mockup for the designers. Try to make your own using this app : https://cookup.ai/a/design-mock-up-wrqoikz6/ here’s an example for “a logo of a dog for a street vending franchise “ : https://cookup.ai/o/a-logo-of-a-dog-for-a-street-vending-franchise-tuj5iduqvf/ and here for “icon of a small cute dog for client” : https://cookup.ai/o/icon-of-a-small-cute-dog-for-client-design-moc-dfnn6c0i4s/ then you take that output and make mock up instructions for producing a mockup : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pioneering-a-nove-wqryxhxn9y/ try with your output here : https://cookup.ai/a/design-mock-up-instructions-gtynwwal/ then you take that output and use that in your favorite design software like Adobe : https://cookup.ai/a/design-mock-up-adobe-illustrator-jrvejfep/ here’s the example with the logo above : https://cookup.ai/o/the-mock-up-above-is-an-icon-of-a-small-cute-do-1seqvv9dog/ and just for a “dog” https://cookup.ai/o/dog-design-mock-up-adobe-illustrator-wk0t9a8ssl/ basically you take that output and save it as a *.ai file and you can open it in illustrator. Many folks also use Autocad : https://cookup.ai/a/design-mock-up-autocad-sfmvloz8/ here’s an example with the dress above : https://cookup.ai/o/beautiful-white-dress-with-hood-in-linen-st-wn9tw1coic/ and for the dog logo with the mockup output : https://cookup.ai/o/mock-up-of-doggy-daycare-service-icon-the-moc-rjxzwyadfj/ a lot of the time your mockup will be for a webpage , here’s an app to generate that : https://cookup.ai/a/design-mock-up-html-css-zfogdco8/ we’re still working on all that at cookup so there’s a fair bit of injection happening right now : https://cookup.ai/o/home-page-for-a-small-biotechnology-company-mo-grhmtug5h3/ sometimes for more advanced stuff, you do things in Java : https://cookup.ai/a/design-mock-up-java-8-bdf4shel/ here’s the example for the dress : https://cookup.ai/o/beautiful-white-dress-with-a-hood-in-linen-de-zmhpbjj5td/ and the website : https://cookup.ai/o/home-page-for-a-small-biotechnology-company-mo-ej7ao1qi32/ for most other applications you might use json files , try this app : https://cookup.ai/a/design-mock-up-json-gscyw2uw/ here’s the example for the webpage : https://cookup.ai/o/home-page-for-a-small-biotechnology-company-mo-mbutbcrrhw/ another pretty important activity for designers is making logos . This app makes an svg file : https://cookup.ai/a/design-tools-logo-create-svg-1aiwxrd8/ here’s the example for the dog logo above : https://cookup.ai/o/the-mockup-of-a-logo-of-a-dog-for-a-street-vendi-uvsmspphd3/ here’s another example https://cookup.ai/o/wireframe-instructions-using-adobe-illustrator-pyiov0ewwp/ i used the adobe illustrator output for that one . Remember the app for the lesson plans for the kids ? here’s an app that makes exercises based on the parameters of the lesson plan for any subject : https://cookup.ai/a/exercise-problems-kynz1tke/ here is an example for learning the french language : https://cookup.ai/o/difficult-french-adults-word-problems-3bkfl6ymlj/ here is an example with simple math problems for a 14 year old : https://cookup.ai/o/difficult-algebra-geometry-14-years-old-hldveryglw/ here is one for more difficult math problems for a 22 years old grad student https://cookup.ai/o/difficult-mathematical-reasoning-integrals-jya866uucz/ i dont know if would be able to solve these (but probably yes :-) ) Another app to do this maybe a bit better is the WorkBook app : https://cookup.ai/a/quiz-workbook-for-education-8qrs5rkl/ here’s an example for 17 year old student in 11th grade physics class https://cookup.ai/o/17-year-old-student-in-11th-grade-physics-class-747ywebagt/ here’s one for "4th grade, digestion rates https://cookup.ai/o/science-4th-grade-digestion-rates-practical-e-wl1n3swezt/ here’s another for worldwar 2 : https://cookup.ai/o/history-worldwar-2-15-year-quiz-workbook-nu9p3hvv2h/ folks have been using this app a lot actually ! Now that you have all your questions maybe you need help to solve some ? Here’s the Problem Solver App : https://cookup.ai/a/problem-solver-lrsnpcdw/ here’s an example for algebra : https://cookup.ai/o/fx-3x-3-for-x-real-and-gt-3t-3-for-t-fcap3rjn83/ here’s another for calculus : https://cookup.ai/o/let-the-interval-a-infinity-be-the-range-of-qmfbtjdgrs/ Maybe you’re a student that needs to write an essay or you need an example essay , or really, to write anything : https://cookup.ai/a/essay-writer-jv1aopmy/ this essay writter can help you write something for example on homeostasis : https://cookup.ai/o/efine-the-term-homoeostasis-and-using-examples-e-irvfwvrrhy/ or an essay on how to stop procrastinating : https://cookup.ai/o/listing-the-4-ways-to-help-you-stop-procrastina-5kkqxt00pt/ if you’re afraid of running afoul detector policies , try the detector proof easy essay app free here : https://cookup.ai/a/easy-essay-detector-proof-y9ojklov/ here’s an example : https://cookup.ai/o/on-the-topic-of-figure-painting-in-paris-easy-86vcnkq9fe/ it replaces certain letters with a nullspace then the letter to evade detection, if you’re getting a lot of symbols in the essay copy paste it into a markdown editor and they should disappear. See here since markdown is not supported : https://cookup.ai/o/how-to-avoid-plagiarism-detectors-easy-essay-n7ntedsdnn/ sometimes when you’re writing you need to argue from A to B , try it here : https://cookup.ai/a/from-a-to-b-reasoning-from-a-to-b-1jda5cyp/ here’s an example : https://cookup.ai/o/nucleotides-are-important-for-cellular-signallin-8eb9wmdan0/ try it in any subject. Conversely, you might need a counter argument for a given claim : https://cookup.ai/a/logic-counter-argument-mh23bzhc/ here’s an example for If you want to find a good job, you should work hard: https://cookup.ai/o/if-you-want-to-find-a-good-job-you-should-work-savzaceiie/ In many writings you’ll also need tables, copy paste unstructured data (ex. from a pdf ) to make a table in markdown format : https://cookup.ai/o/chemicals-peptides-and-recombinant-proteins100-3xqvttyphl/ copy paste the output in a markdown editor for best results. sometimes you want to analyse your data , check out this app , copy paste your pdf data and give context : https://cookup.ai/a/data-results-analysis-ykrjxb31/ see here the results for a blood test : https://cookup.ai/o/tsh-serum-chimiluminescence-abbott-alin-da3rkw8of0/ Let’s be honest, most folks use excel , check out this app to describe any excel function : https://cookup.ai/a/excel-9chnuveu/ enter your function in freeform to get the function : https://cookup.ai/o/a-formula-to-describe-the-date-and-time-excel-dfw434foep/ or for a macro : https://cookup.ai/o/a-macro-to-link-my-sheet-with-a-document-called-rq4ol7luzv/ actually i made a special app just for macros : https://cookup.ai/a/excel-macros-esxm4uaz/ here is an example of a complicated macro : https://cookup.ai/o/hi-i-need-a-macro-code-to-copy-the-an-adjustant-8ptt9hzlfv/ here is one for an even more complicated one: https://cookup.ai/o/i-want-to-a-excel-vba-programming-file-for-road-etdl4mkvqw/ and here is a simple one for a vinyl shop : https://cookup.ai/o/i-am-working-on-an-excel-database-of-vinyl-recor-cacxxdd4bz/ most people who actually work with formulas do so in LaTeX , this app produces LaTeX formulas : https://cookup.ai/a/latex-formula-00spf7gu/ here is the example for Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula https://cookup.ai/o/baileyborweinplouffe-formula-latex-formul-ktd09xaoks/ this one represents Pi : https://cookup.ai/o/displaystyle-pi-sum_k0inftyfra-fjpnjfsqkv/ this one is for social science : https://cookup.ai/o/incentive-structure-of-employment-contract-lat-hulr6ppzhu/ Actually many folks use LaTeX to write things, this app will use latex to write a preprint : https://cookup.ai/a/pre-print-latex-vy0hga2j/ this is an example for the Peter Principle : https://cookup.ai/o/the-peter-principle-summarize-pre-print-qqm2bwiugd/ here is one for Use of God in vain, Neopentecostal https://cookup.ai/o/use-of-god-in-vain-neopentecostal-pre-prin-098nsf1ari/ here is one in Spanish : https://cookup.ai/o/nergysens-en-la-industria-nergysens-pretende-w7aovgv09l/ to do any kind of research you need to do a search, but a lot of folks do systematic search , this app generates systematic search terms : https://cookup.ai/a/systematic-search-boolean-search-strings-z6ng0grb/ here’s an example from diabetes research : https://cookup.ai/o/diabetes-mellitus-patient-empowerment-systemat-8el8qpek2d/ here’s another from biology : https://cookup.ai/o/across-the-tree-of-life-systematic-search-eq4dtp8tgf/ once you find your references you need to make a bibliography so here’s the app for that : https://cookup.ai/a/bibliography-jucn4woy/ it creates a bibtex script in the format you want : https://cookup.ai/o/cheng-p-w-1997-from-covariation-to-causati-0sts6dgrae/ & https://cookup.ai/o/cheng-p-w-1997-from-covariation-to-causati-bc1wbkxg9f/ sometimes research or something else is too confusing, here’s an app to make a lay summary : https://cookup.ai/a/lay-summary-4rvs8flz/ here’s a summary of fossil fuel environmental research : https://cookup.ai/o/the-substantial-body-of-literature-documenting-aywxbutrjs/ another run about ExxonMobil : https://cookup.ai/o/the-substantial-body-of-literature-documenting-ogcsccg9rd/ Sometimes you’re looking for information not just summarizing it , so i made an encyclopedia app : https://cookup.ai/a/encaiclopedia-7cmwjq1c/ i wouldnt be surprised if encarta got GPT at some point : https://cookup.ai/o/sometimes-giants-are-smaller-than-you-think-e-tzxphjmrm4/ here’s for Kirchhoff's voltage law : https://cookup.ai/o/kirchhoffs-voltage-law-encaiclopedia-zsxhyhwh5u/ and the potter identity : https://cookup.ai/o/potter-identity-in-electrical-engineering-enc-zgtgli3ge4/ encyclopedias are cool but do you remember almanacs ? here’s the almanac app : https://cookup.ai/a/almanac-bkmwaeqj/ here’s the output for 21st of december : https://cookup.ai/o/21st-of-december-multiple-years-almanac-w4qp2c0zii/ I also made an app to create content in wolof : https://cookup.ai/a/wolof-future-xlw6gpuw/ I’ll be trying to get content creation for local languages to take off : https://cookup.ai/o/moo-di-ko-def-jangu-na-ci-sujet-ci-nii-ci-philos-ovfunzxwss/ contact me if you’re interested in that : https://cookup.ai/o/moo-di-ko-def-jangu-na-ci-sujet-ci-nii-ci-philos-w6wgkaoped/ actually AI is really good at translation, translate whatever you like here : https://cookup.ai/a/translate-remwokk4/ i translated some passages from the wolof examples above : https://cookup.ai/o/jangu-na-ci-sujet-ci-nii-ci-negritude-ci-philoso-5luudnxkim/ and : https://cookup.ai/o/negritude-ci-cosaan-yu-and-ak-cosaan-yi-daal-di-xvgj7tufcs/ Once you' can speak any language and have passed all your classes, you might want to talk to an admissions counsellor : https://cookup.ai/a/admission-whnqib7b/ here’s an assessment for a community college in california : https://cookup.ai/o/community-college-student-40-gpa-political-sc-wlfubay93c/ If you’re a star student aged 15-16 consider applying to my alma matter : https://cookup.ai/a/special-school-selector-lhr8oncj/ I’m part of the french selection commitee so it’s in french : https://cookup.ai/o/eleve-francais-15ans-1820-dans-toutes-les-matie-lrv16nvje0/ remember when you were young and you played “who would win” in a fight ? here’s the app for that in case you need it : https://cookup.ai/a/who-would-win-tssvciza/ here’s the example for : a boa constrictor & cat https://cookup.ai/o/a-boa-constrictor-cat-who-would-win-mw2prpyiid/ and archbichop desmond tutu vs marie curie (Dr. Curie wins) https://cookup.ai/o/archbichop-desmond-tutu-marie-curie-who-wo-qzqgt6dt5d/ Folks love going on trips. Use AI to help plan your iterary https://cookup.ai/a/trip-planner-little-routurier-a2azneqe/ here’s an example for baroque art in Malta : https://cookup.ai/o/la-valette-malta-busy-trip-baroque-music-for-latxxdvlbp/ here’s an example for paris for 4 days : https://cookup.ai/o/paris-france-for-4-days-trip-planner-little-6hgvyzaagl/ and 5 days : https://cookup.ai/o/paris-france-for-5-days-trip-planner-little-qqcuhtdqzl/ what should you bring on your trip ? good question, try this app : https://cookup.ai/a/what-to-bring-kswnufpq/ here’s an example from normandy in february : https://cookup.ai/o/im-going-on-a-day-trip-to-the-beach-in-normandy-1mrn6vmkvd/ If you’re travelling or have an email box , you should be careful for scams . Here’s the scam detector app : https://cookup.ai/a/anti-scam-detector-p1kjgvjw/ just copy paste or describe what you’re seeing, here’s an example for a tax scam in the uk : https://cookup.ai/o/foraoternh8uogeowebnefirqupeizsaotnoi34hus-4wpf1jxnma/ and an email upgrade scam : https://cookup.ai/o/c12-outlook-dear-user-all-hotmail-customers-ha-hlf2awn30x/ I also made an app to debunk conspiracy theories and fake news : https://cookup.ai/a/debunker-apx1db8w/ here’s an example for mangoes cure covid : https://cookup.ai/o/la-mangue-gueri-la-covid-19-debunker-6hs4nlxhjr/ and that the vaccine is a conspiracy : https://cookup.ai/o/le-vaccin-covid-est-un-complot-debunker-zjwbaeuxpx/ the most interesting one is the bomb plot from congo : https://cookup.ai/o/httpsaupicinfoscomnord-kivu-explosion-dune-0rsx2gdxud/ just from the URL input it produced something really quite well done. Another app i made is the conspiracy theory creator : https://cookup.ai/a/russophile-k9zjyymf/ i called it russophile because everything russian is just garbage fakes lol , here’s an example for “Jewish Nazis From Ukraine Smoking Pot And Building Underground Biolabs To Engineer Mosquitos To Target Ethnic Slavs In Russia Guess The Rest Of Them Were Like Whatever” : https://cookup.ai/o/jewish-nazis-from-ukraine-smoking-pot-and-buildi-ng4qetdw84/ works quite well, maybe it will help make the entire russian foreign service redundant ? end the nightmare by donating here : u24.gov.ua i heard a lot of rusian soldiers were targetted because they were using dating apps. If you want to join them in dating hell, try this dating profile generator : https://cookup.ai/a/sincerely-dating-profile-generator-lf1m9l6s/ i think people liked it because they tried to hack it but here’s one i made as an example : https://cookup.ai/o/32-male-84-kg-straight-white-172m-i-like-to-7aqvxyifbo/ i originally made it because the cookup platform is flirting with these “spammy” types of apps, but mine is way better :-) whether you find someone to or not, you need to sleep, perhaps even dream . Here’s an app to keep a dream journal : https://cookup.ai/a/dream-explainer-yjmnu3vr/ here’s an example from when i was younger : https://cookup.ai/o/i-had-a-recurring-dream-of-stealing-an-egg-after-cpkibppswt/ someone had another dream : https://cookup.ai/o/dream-about-my-girlfriend-cheating-on-me-dream-grka1oadue/ Remember T8 ringtones ? i dont know why i made this , but here it is a Ringtone Generator for T8 keyboards : https://cookup.ai/a/t8-ringtone-generator-n6pgangt/ here is the Zelda theme : https://cookup.ai/o/zelda-melody-polyphonic-t8-ringtone-generator-mjnnevotvj/ The next few apps are just tributes to Codex & Co-Pilot both of which are better suited in your IDE , Gitlab or something like VBS . Check the first one out here : https://cookup.ai/a/co-pilot-ai-to-help-you-code-zsfgk4nm/ remember the NASA experiment from above? here’s the code for it : https://cookup.ai/o/develop-an-app-that-uses-data-from-the-telescope-1n2eugkknb/ here is one to scrape a website to excel : https://cookup.ai/o/create-script-to-scrape-a-website-to-excel-go-qdxeyouinx/ here’s an app to create top level code : https://cookup.ai/a/co-pilot-top-level-code-bccjfqgs/ an example for folks to make a ghost blog api microservice: https://cookup.ai/o/a-link-using-apis-and-microservices-to-link-ghos-2ulpfhwl7o/ Another way to get good results is with boiler plate code : https://cookup.ai/a/co-pilot-boiler-plate-code-fmhetodq/ here’s an example to create a chat bot: https://cookup.ai/o/a-chat-bot-for-matrix-servers-and-discord-server-qgnqvxnvzn/ here’s an app to create regex expressions : https://cookup.ai/a/co-pilot-regex-expression-k5hctbve/ here’s one in python : https://cookup.ai/o/function-to-scrape-all-profile-information-nam-da0uncppew/ here’s one in Golang : https://cookup.ai/o/function-to-use-google-api-to-scrape-a-website-f-y7el3rffmi/ for whatever reason you might want to simulate command line returns . here is the command line app : https://cookup.ai/a/command-line-y70oh4of/ try it with chmod +x readfile ./readfile filename.txt https://cookup.ai/o/chmod-x-readfile-readfile-filenametxt-comm-61ljxmpaqu/ or any other command . A lot of folks have been asking about data creation. I really like this Prolog app for that : https://cookup.ai/a/co-pilot-data-creation-prolog-68sa5kbr/ here is an output for a chatbot : https://cookup.ai/o/to-test-a-chatbot-using-google-api-co-pilot-6y9xnvewhf/ here is what happens for the digestion example from above : https://cookup.ai/o/demonstrate-the-steps-in-digestion-i-will-be-us-kjjou8iswf/ another more straight forward app is the create data app : https://cookup.ai/a/create-data-my8wzz4a/ here is an example for a list of books :https://cookup.ai/o/type-book-struct-id-uint-jsonid-go-yrx8uy53uf/ and another example : https://cookup.ai/o/type-book-struct-id-uint-jsonid-go-xhqjpp2qxo/ i really like these. Another way to test a function is a unit test. Try the unit test app here : https://cookup.ai/a/unit-test-sp6f7pl3/ here’s an example to test quick sort in java 8: https://cookup.ai/o/write-test-cases-to-ensure-that-the-new-quick_so-uj7r1jelu3/ Your function is still not working ? try the stack trace app : https://cookup.ai/a/stack-trace-error-message-lz9df4ld/ just copy paste your error message : https://cookup.ai/o/use-key-stack-trace-error-message-cte9ognj5o/ here’s another example for ggplot : https://cookup.ai/o/error-in-ggplotiris-aesx-sepallength-y-jamfmpobfu/ Once you get your app working , you’ll want to figure out the information model. try this app : https://cookup.ai/a/information-model-crwdl7ah/ here’s an example for : mobile app to rent cars like uber https://cookup.ai/o/mobile-app-to-rent-cars-like-uber-information-wq5bfzzind/ and if you have an information model you’ll need a data model : https://cookup.ai/a/data-model-kjqpe7ua/ here’s the same example but for data model: https://cookup.ai/o/mobile-app-to-rent-cars-like-uber-data-model-kvcpenu2y2/ if you’re going to ship you’ll need an infrastructure plan : https://cookup.ai/a/cloud-infrastructure-plan-oyxvoc8b/ here’s an example for a biofabrication firm : https://cookup.ai/o/we-are-a-life-sciences-company-pioneering-a-nove-gptg16oyh3/ I also made prompt apps to practice prompt making. Try this app for a simple prompt interface : https://cookup.ai/a/prompt-follow-on-leabsbpn/ here’s an example for a payment service : https://cookup.ai/o/pix-payment-in-installments-prompt-follow-o-8yevsi9c81/ someone from Canary Islands used it to write a poem : https://cookup.ai/o/crea-un-poema-sobre-tenerife-prompt-follow-o-xw6td2j1qd/ and write a biography of a historical figure : https://cookup.ai/o/biografia-breve-de-josefina-de-la-torre-gran-can-nmatn2svv6/ pretty cool ! Ready to learn more sophisticated techniques ? try the Prompt App : https://cookup.ai/a/prompt-lbuxx1ed/ i made it to teach folks how to write prompts on cook up , here’s an example for : social inequality, political scientist https://cookup.ai/o/social-inequality-political-scientist-promp-tmhjeoaeny/ here’s one for Universal Basic income , economist https://cookup.ai/o/universal-basic-income-economist-prompt-wohvomtbbk/ here’s for “Help create business systems to run a small business. From the perspective of a franchise developer “ : https://cookup.ai/o/help-create-business-systems-to-run-a-small-busi-hz0r5xb4cu/ and here is “Diagnose Dry Eye, Assess the Above from the perspective of an Ophthalomologist, Print complete answer in markdown format” https://cookup.ai/o/diagnose-dry-eye-assess-the-above-from-the-pe-85a1nvkllp/ hope it helps !

    #graves #hyperthyroidism #iodine #mealplan #nosolidfood #mealplanner
23. 

    Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-10-12 · 23:11 UTC

    Last voyage of the battlecruiser “Moltke”: the thread about how a German warship almost destroyed the Forth Bridge

    On a recent (2022) trip to Orkney we visited the excellent and newly refurbished Scapa Flow museum and I bought a fascinating book on the subject of the internment, scuttling and salvage of the German Hocheseeflotte – the Imperial German Navy’s “High Seas Fleet” , after WW1. (The author, Dan Van Der Vat, is very readable, being a journalist by trade.) So naturally I’ve managed to find an exciting and little known of local history angle to this.

    The SMS Moltke (Seiner Majestät Schiff, His Majesty’s Ship) was a 25,000 ton battlecruiser of the Imperial German Navy. She was 612 feet long, 96.5 feet wide, could make 25.5 knots on the 51,000 horsepower produced by her engines and was armed with ten 11 inch guns in five turrets. Battlecruisers were the pride of contemporary fleets, as well armed as the main battleships but able to reach the sort of speeds usually reserved for smaller ships. Big, well armed and fast, Moltke was every bit the equal for her Royal Navy equivalents.

    Moltke in New York, 1912

    At the end of the war the Hocheseeflotte was still largely materially intact, but organisation and discipline was another matter. It was forced under the terms of Armistice by the Allies into a humiliating internment under the watchful eye of the Royal Navy. It had been hoped by the Germans that the fleet would be dispersed to neutral ports but instead it ended up imprisoned in the bleak confines of Scapa Flow, the principal wartime anchorage of the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet. Its remaining ships arrived at Scapa after a rendezvous with the Grand Fleet in the Firth of Forth, from where it was escorted into a miserable internment.

    The German Fleet at Anchor off Inchkeith, Firth of Forth: After the Surrender, IWM ART 1926

    The German ships were disarmed and made incapable of war or even escape, but legally they remained the property of the German state. They were supplied by German provision ships sent by the German government from German ports. Although their crews were not officially prisoners, they were not allowed to leave the confines of their ships and no British personnel were allowed aboard apart from small official delegations pertaining to the administrative niceties of exile. As the signing of the Treaty of Versailles approached, the German Admiral in charge at Scapa – Ludwig Von Reuter – found himself in an impossible position.

    Vizeadmiral Hans Hermann Ludwig von Reuter

    Von Reuter was caught between the national honour of the Prussian officer class; his mutinous and non-compliant crews; British belligerence and overwhelming Allied political pressure. His fear, not without reasonable, was that the British would try and seize the German fleet on the signing of the treaty. He gathered around him a select circle of loyal officers and right under the nose of the watchful Royal Navy and his own suspicious and resentful sailors, managed to organise a mass scuttling of almost his entire fleet.

    The battleship Bayern sinking in Scapa Flow, the same image as used on the cover of Dan Van Der Vat’s book.

    On 21st June 1919 the conspirators managed to scuttle fifteen of the sixteen battleships and battlecruisers, five of the eight fleet cruisers and thirty-two of the fifty destroyers at Scapa. The cream of the German Navy was turned into the half a million tons of scrap metal on the seabed in a matter of hours. Publicly the British were furious (the Royal Navy doubly so as it had been totally humiliated), but Von Reuter had actually done everyone involved a favour and simplified negotiations over the fate of the fleet – If the German Navy lay at the bottom of Scapa Flow then nobody could have it: not the British, the Germans, the French, the Americans or even the Italians.

    Seydlitz on her side in Scapa Flow

    Scapa Flow was now littered with over fifty German wrecks in various states of submersion, posing quite the navigation hazard – as demonstrated ably by the government whaler Ramna which got stuck fast on top of the capsized hull of the Moltke. The world soon moved on from the scuttling as shattered countries sought to begin rebuilding themselves post war.

    The Admiralty whaler Ramna, high and dry on the Moltke’s partially submerged hull

    Enterprising locals (often unofficially) stripped what they could access above waterline for scrap until an enterprising Shetland shipowner and councillor – J. W. Roberston – proved that you could salvage wrecks from underwater and brought a number of torpedo boats ashore for their scrap value. Enter now stage left the enterprising, irrepressible and energetic figure of Ernest Frank Guelph Cox. Cox was a self made engineer and metal dealer from the Midlands who had the vision to believe he could access and salvage the five hundred thousand tons of best German steel located at the bottom of Scapa Flow. Now that the price of scrap metal had started to rise after the immediate postwar slump, his backers believed that it would now be financially worthwhile.

    Ernest F. Cox, from the book Cox’s Navy by Tony Booth

    Cox’s business partner in his firm – Cox & Danks – was his cousin, the capital behind the operation. Together they bought the rights to salvage the Hocheseeflotte from the Admiralty and set to work at Scapa in the mid 1920s. Cox had the foresight to hire Tom McKenzie, a Glaswegian naval salvage diver who would pretty much write the book on naval salvage diving.

    Tom McKenzie

    Although all involved were practical, skilled and experienced men, they were starting from almost nothing and had to largely invent, improvise and improve all the required techniques for marine salvage on this scale. Overcoming setback after setback, they were driven along by Cox’s indefatigable determination and Danks’ deep pockets. They made rapid progress and the first torpedo boat – V70 – was raised after less than 2 months work in 1924. Moving on to the next boat and then the next one after that, they honed their techniques and were soon raising ships at a rapid rate. Within two years, all twenty six torpedo boats that Cox had the rights to take had been raised.

    Salvaging a destroyer

    Cox now turned his attention to the big ships on the bottom, the battleships and battlecruisers. In May 1926 he started on the SMS Hindenburg, but even though she reached the surface the operation proved a disaster and she had to be quickly resunk. The precarious situation of the salvagers at Scapa was saved by the discovery of huge stocks of coal in the bunkers of SMS Seydlitz; it was found these could be accessed and “mined” from the surface and this free source of fuel tided the operations over. Cox now set his sights on the Moltke. The basic technique was relatively simple. Divers were sent down to plug the holes in the hull and it was pumped full of compressed air, displacing the water aboard. As it leaked and bubbled out through the holes that had been missed, these two were plugged. Eventually air could be pumped in quicker than it escaped and slowly the hull would start to float.

    Salvage at Scapa. Cox’s men, aboard the deck of a partially raised destroyer, man the pumps filling the hull with compressed air.

    I say relatively, in practice it was tremendously difficult and verging on the impossible. They were working at – or beyond – the limits of contemporary diving skills and technology. Conditions were harsh and the environment of Scapa Flow was unforgiving as any British sailor ever sent there would attest, but Cox’ determination and McKenzie’s skill drove them forwards. The Germans had efficiently and effectively wrecked the watertight integrity of the ships’ inner bulkheads so before they could be raised in a controlled manner, divers had to go in and restore it by welding and plugging any gaps they could find. To make this possible, airlocks – like huge submarine chimneys – were built down into each compartment. From these, divers could access the innards and get to work under intense air pressure, working upside down on ships encased in marine slime, often in complete darkness.

    These jaunty cylinders breaching the surface of Scapa Flow are the air lock towers, reaching down to the sunken ship below

    Cox was a bit of a showman, always on site and always hands on. His men respected him and the press loved him. He made sure the latter were around whenever anything interesting was happening. The Scotsman filed almost weekly progress reports on the salvage of the Moltke.

    • October 21, 1926. Compressed air pumping operations commence on the hull of the Moltke.
    • December 10, 1926. Moltke is rising unevenly and the divers are forced to sink her in case she is caught by the winter gales.
    • Feb. 15, 1927. Work restarts after winter storms, the first airlock is fitted and almost 100 men are at work on the Moltke.
    • Feb. 24, 1927. The difficulties are described of working in a 15PSI atmosphere where cutting torches burn up the oxygen as fast as it can be pumped in
    • May 30, 1927. Work resumes again after 2 months of gales. A disaster is narrowly avoided when the wrong valve is closed and compressed air rushes through the ship from stern to bow, blowing the 16 divers at work inside through the ship with it.
    • June 13, 1927. Cox has the Pathé newsreel men on site to witness the triumph of the Moltke breaching the surface in a controlled manner and refloating after 8 years on the seabed.

    June 13th 1927, Moltke breaches the surface and stays there. Cox and his men are triumphant

    But don’t just look at those grainy thumbnails, watch the whole clip on the Pathe website! Over the next four months the refloated Moltke was painstakingly winched towards Cox & Danks’ salvage base at Lyness on the island of Hoy, narrowly avoiding grounding on the island of Cava when one of her big 11 inch guns fouled the seabed and had to be cut free. They begin cutting her up in situ but it soon becomes obvious that the isolated shores of Scapa Flow were the wrong place to do this and made little economic sense. Cox therefore convinced the Admiralty to lease him the No. 3 Dry Dock at Rosyth Royal Dockyard, the largest and most modern in Scotland.

    Dragging the upturned Moltke to Lyness

    He then sold on the scrapping rights to the Alloa Shipbreaking Company, who would undertake the actual dismantling work at Rosyth, thus leaving him free to concentrate on the dark arts of salvage. But the problem still remained as to how to get the beached and upside-down hulk of Moltke 250 miles south to Rosyth. The only solution was to refloat it and tow it there – a hard enough task if it didn’t include having to transit the Pentland Firth with its infamous tidal currents, some of the fastest in the world. Undaunted, Cox set to work. The ship was lightened of thousands of tons of steel such as propellers and shafts, armour plate etc., and her hull was patched up with concrete where they had started to demolish it.

    Getting Moltke ready for sea at Scapa

    Refloated for the journey, two shelters were built on her “deck”, actually the upturned bottom; one with accommodation for the eight crew who would make the journey (including Cox himself), the other with enough pumps to keep her full of compressed air. Lifeboats were thoughtfully included too. By May 18th, Moltke was ready to go. Controversially at the time, both in Britain and in Germany, the three tugs that were chartered to take her on her final voyage were German, including the Seefalke – the most powerful in the world – the Posen and the Simson.

    The unlikely shape of the upside down Moltke, with Simsun and Seefalke lashed to her sides. The third tug could pull from the front or stern to provide better directional control.

    For good measure, on board was also one William Mowat, the coxswain of the Longhope Lifeboat, probably the only man in the world qualified to pilot the wallowing hulk out of Scapa and safely past Duncansby Head.

    William Mowat and the crew of the Longhope lifeboat. “Bill” Mowat is middle row, 2nd from left. © Orkney Image Library, 10060

    Despite Mowat’s presence, disaster was soon upon them when the weather got up. The three tugs could not make headway against the wind and current and Moltke started going backwards though the Pentland Firth, rolling by up to 13.5 degrees. She lost 6 feet of her precious freeboard as the compressed air bubbles within that kept her afloat leaked out due to the constant rocking and pitching motions. The pumps could not keep up and she was slowly sinking. Salvation came with the tides themselves, which inevitably turned and speedily ejected the battlecruiser and her three attendants out of the Firth.

    After this literally rocky start, things calmed down and the pumps were able to refill the air bubbles and lift the hull back out of the sea again. With the tugs now making headway the close call was soon forgotten about and Cox the showman had the crew play a makeshift game of cricket on the deck for the press. I think he is the man umpiring at the back, in the pullover with his hands behind his back.

    All calm on the deck of the Moltke © Orkney Library

    The rest of the journey to the Firth of Forth proceeded calmly and according to plan and by May 21st she was off Granton. The last manoeuvre required of the tugs was to get her safely under the Forth Bridge and into the Rosyth basin. And this is where things start to go wrong. Again.

    This time it was down to petty officialdom. The Forth Pilot arrived from Granton and tried to take command. He was joined shortly afterwards by the Admiralty pilot from Rosyth. A standoff now ensued as the civil and military opposite numbers argued over who had the rights to pilot the Moltke up the Firth. Neither was willing to back down and the set to kept on going, as did the changing tide and currents of the Firth. Gradually, so to did Moltke herself, gently easing her way inevitably upstream. Before the situation could be resolved, they found themselves coming upon Inchgarvie island; the very rock on which the piers of the bridge was built. And the newsmen from Pathé were there to film it all!

    One of tugs found itself grounded on Inchgarvie…

    Moltke approaches Inchgarvie

    The Seefalke, attached at the back and in charge of providing steerage then drifted around the wrong side of the island and had to cut the tow. Moltke was now at the mercy of the currents, with two tugs lashed to her, one being dragged along the bottom, and with no ability to manoeuvre their charge.

    Seefalke stands off

    Now totally out of control, Moltke spun through 90 degrees and drifted sideways down the Firth towards the bridge, dragging the helpless tugs along with her. All twenty three thousand or so tons of her was now heading broadside towards the central piers of the bridge, those which rose directly out of the water itself. All the while, trains rattled to and fro overhead with little idea what was unfolding below them.

    Moltke floats down the Firth towards the bridge

    If you watch the remarkable clip, you can see Moltke drifting beam-on towards the bridge as a train goes by overhead. Somebody must have been saying their prayers onboard though, as somehow the tugs lashed to Moltke‘s hull managed to position the 612 feet wide floating wrecking ball perfectly between the piers and Inchgarvie, narrowly avoiding disaster.

    Safely under the bridge and back under control.

    The Seefalke was now able to get a line across and bring the hulk under control, steering her gingerly towards the safety of Rosyth. The watching press were blissfully unaware how close disaster had been, the Scotsman reported “a wonderful piece of navigation and most successfully performed“. However, if you look closely at the footage, Moltke approaches the bridge stern first (with her 4 propeller supports leading the way) but passes through it bow-first (with the big notch cut out from initial breaking up leading). The big battlecruiser had done a 180 degree pirouette while passing under the bridge!

    Nothing to see here!

    Moltke was edged finally towards the channel into No. 3 Dry Dock but Cox couldn’t yet breathe a sigh of relief; first he has to get the ship into the dock, as his contract stipulates he won’t get paid by the Alloa Shipbreaking Co. until she is in and the dock is drained.

    Moltke approaches the gate of No. 3 Dry Dock

    But this last step will be no small feat – there is just a one day window on the highest spring tide to get the upside down hulk into dock. Ships usually go in the right way up of course, but the inverted Moltke is drawing 41 feet of water at her deepest, 25% more than she would otherwise, and the dock gate had a lip that reduces the depth of the water to only 38 feet! But this was Cox and he was undaunted – by an incredibly skilful act of pumping compressed air in at one end and letting it out at another, and then reversing the process, he was able to “hop” the deepest part of the ship over the dock lip and get her safely in with the gates shut.

    But on the brink of final triumph, once again officialdom almost screwed everything up for Cox. With Moltke bobbing in the waters of the still flooded dock, the supervisor stepped in and disagreed about how to support the upside down ship on the dock floor. He had a point – ships didn’t normally go into dock with their pointy-bits facing down the way. There were all sorts of projections beneath the hull that might damage the critical national infrastructure that he was in charge of. Of course the Admiralty should have worked this all out with Cox before they signed over the use of the dock to him. A frantic phonecall to Whitehall couldn’t resolve things so Cox jumped straight on the first train south to thrash it out in person. Ironically to do so he first had to pass over the bridge he very nearly demolished only a few hours previously. In London an agreement was reached and he was back the next day, 28th May, to get his men to work shoring up the hull with baulks of timber.

    Then dock was then slowly drained and the ship finally came to rest on the bottom. It was June 5th as the last of the water was pumped; Cox had finally won. He had raised a 23,000 ton ship from the seabed that had spent 8 years submerged – twice! -, beached it, refloated it, sailed it 250 miles through the treacherous Pentland Firth and squeezed it upside down into a dry dock into which it shouldn’t have fitted and all without demolishing one of the most important structures in the western world!

    Moltke high and dry in the dock

    The Alloa men could now get to work and on September 13th 1928 set about cutting up the pride of the Hocheseeflotte into thousands of tons of valuable scrap metal.

    Moltke being cut up

    Cox would go on to salvage every ship he could from the bottom of Scapa Flow giving up eight years later and £10,000 worse off than when he began. For all his drive and determination, his financial skills were somewhat lacking and his pioneering methods proved inefficient and just never paid back. Other Scottish businessmen, including those of Alloa Shipbreakers and salvage diver Tom Mckenzie, then formed Metal Industries Ltd to carry on were Cox left off. With more efficient, refined techniques and more sensible business practices, their venture would pay off in a big way.

    The salvage of the Kaiserin by Metal Industries in 1936. Sealed and pumped full of compressed air, the ship breaches the surface, air locks and all. From the Illustrated London News.

    The last Scapa ship raised by Metal Industries was SMS Derfflinger. Another war intervened in this venture and she spent WW2 beached and upside down, alongside the disarmed old battleship HMS Iron Duke, HQ ship at Scapa, which during WW1 had faced off against the Hocheseeflotte at the Battle of Jutland. The salvage men aboard Derfflinger would save the Iron Duke after she was nearly sunk in an air raid early in the war. Derfflinger was floated into a submersible dry dock and towed to Faslane after the war for scrapping.

    Derfflinger enters Faslane, the last of the German battleships from Scapa to be scrapped

    One of Metal Industries’ many improvements on the salvage process was to rapidly sink the ship as soon as they had raised it, to crush and concertina the protruding superstructure up inside the hull, removing most of the underwater obstructions that plagued Cox. It is praiseworthy that the basic salvage techniques pioneered by Cox and McKenzie, and refined by Metal Industries, are still those that are in use today.

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24. 

    Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-22 · 12:00 UTC

    White Friars and Lepers: the thread about Greenside’s chapel and hospital

    Apropos recent world events (at the time of writing in December 2021) I thought it was worthwhile taking a few minutes to spare a thought for Lepers in 16th century Edinburgh, who lived life according to incredibly strict terms that we we might now call “lockdown“.

    A 16th century leper. The clapper, broad hat, cowl and cloak are a recurrent image of leprosy sufferers of this period. CC-BY-SA 4.0 Wellcome Collection

    There had been a leper hospital in Edinburgh since medieval times, but there is no positive record as to where it may have been. There is a story you sometimes hear that the placename Liberton derives from “leper town“, but that is easily debunked by the fact the place name predates the arrival of the word leper into Scots language by centuries. By the 16th century, after the reformation, the leper hospital was located at Greenside, outside the city boundary at the time and actually in the neighbouring Barony of Restalrig. The approximate location was between the junction of London Road and Leith Walk and Greenside Church. We know this not only because it was helpfully marked up on those old Ordnance Survey maps but also there are surviving records, a contemporary illustration and archaeological evidence uncovered during the interminable tram works.

    OS 1849 town Plan overlaid on modern aerial imagery showing the general location of the Leper hospital / Carmelite Friary of Greenside. Drag the slider to compare. Highlighted are the site of the “Rood Well of Greenside” and the “Monastery of Carmelite Friars (1536) subsequently Greenside Hospital for Lepers (1591)”. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

    The use of this site goes back centuries before the hospital however and its earliest recorded use was as the site of the Rude Chapel. The Rude refers either to a Rood Screen – a feature of medieval churches – to an existing cross (or Rude) near the site, or to the nearby Augustinian Abbey of Holyrood (which refers to the Holy Rood or cross upon which Jesus was crucified). This chapel may have been founded around 1456 when King James II gave the valley of Greenside to the town as a “sporting” field, one for the medieval sorts of sports like jousting and open air theatre. In 1554 the Queen Regent Mary of Guise attended an open air production of David Lindsay’s epic play “Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, in Commendation of Vertew and Vituperation of Vyce“; all 9 hours of it.

    A 2013 production of “A Satire of the Three Estates” in renaissance costume at Linlithgow Palace, by Staging the Scottish Court

    Little is known of the Rude Chapel, not even which saint it was dedicated to, and it had fallen fell out of use by 1518 when James Hamilton – Earl of Arran and Lord Provost of the city at that time – conveyed it to the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel: the Carmelite order, also known as the White Friars on account of the colour of their cloaks.

    “Conferimento della Regola del Carmelo” – Confirmation of the Carmelite Rule – a 1430 Fresco in Florence by Filippo Lippi

    The other friars in Edinburgh at this time were the Dominicans or Black Friars in the Canongate (see also Blackfriars Street) and the Franciscans or Grey Friars where the Kirk of that name now is. In addition, in Leith there were the Augustians at St. Anthony’s Preceptory, near the Foot of the Walk whose chapel still exists as a ruin on the slopes of Arthur’s Seat. The Carmelites were well established in the Lothians with friaries at Linlithgow and South Queensferry, which Greenside fell under the patronage of. George Hutton’s sketches of the late 18th century give us an idea of what the Queensferry Friary looked like before later repairs.

    Carmelite Church at South Queensferry, from Hutton Drawings. CC-BY-SA National Library of Scotland

    In 1557 the Prior of Greenside, David Balbirnie, is recorded as being in office at Queensferry. This was perhaps as a result of Greenside having being left in ruins by the English Army in 1544 during the Burning of Edinburgh.

    “A Coloured Plan, or Bird’s Eye View, of the Town of Edinburgh“, the English Army marches from Leith towards Edinburgh via the Calton Hill. A 1544 watercolour, probably by the military engineer Richard Lee.

    The cluster of buildings shown on the above illustration on the right hand side of the image, below the castle and on the reverse slope of Calton Hill, are probably the Greenside priory and its doo’cot. The friars probably ran some sort of hospital here in the medieval meaning of the word – spiritual care on a Biblical basis, to prepare the soul for the next life – rather than the sort of medical institution that we would now think of.

    This collection of buildings on the northwest slopes below Calton Hill, in a walled enclosure with a dovecot is probably the Greenside priory. Credit: With permission, from the British Library archive, Cotton Augustus I. ii. 56

    In 1534 two Protestant heretics, David Straiton and Norman Gourlay, were condemned to be burnt at the stake, a gruesome sentence that was carried out within the walls at Greenside. The priory was out of use by the time of the Reformation when the only other contemporary image shows it a roofless complex of buildings on the 1560 map of the Siege of Leith – probably also by the same Rirchard Lee – which records its name as the Roode Chappelle. There is also a partial wall shown, but no dovecot.

    “Roode Chappell” from the 1560 “Petworth House Map” of the Siege of Leith. PHA 4640, Reproduced by the kind permission of Lord Egremont and with acknowledgements to the County Archivist, West Sussex Record Office

    By the 1580s the friary and chapel were both long abandoned and when the city was casting around for a site to locate a leper hospital their ruins were a potential candidate. St. Paul’s Work, a charitable house in the Waverley Valley next to the Trinity College Kirk, was also mooted but was found to be unsuitable and so in 1589 the Magistrates of the city approved that a Leper House was to be provided at Greenside. This was financed by John Roberstson, a wealthy merchant of the city, in response to his prayers for an act of mercy being answered.

    The hospital provided for seven inmates, and inmates was the right word. Although they were admitted to the “care” of the hospital voluntarily, this was a hard bargain and the price of admittance was forfeiting nearly all rights as an individual. These first seven patients were Robert Mardow, James Garvie, Johnn MacRere, James Wricht, and Johnn Wilderspune. Also incarcerated (voluntarily) with them were two of ht men’s wives; Isobel Barcar (Mrs Mardow) and Janet Galt (Mrs Garvie).

    No manner of Lipper persone, man nor woman, fra this tyme forth, cum amangis uther cleine personis, nor be nocht fund in the kirk, nor fleshe merket, nor no other merket within this burghe, under the payne of burnyng of their cheik and bannasing off the toune

    1530 Act of the Scottish Parliament against lepers.

    The inmates had to abide by the strict rules of the hospital on penalty of death. To underline the seriousness of this threat there was a gallows erected on the gable end of the hospital and the keeper had power of carrying out that sentence, on the spot, for any infraction. The local name for the confines of the hospital wall was reportedly The Hangman’s Acre. The inmates were forbidden to leave the confines of its walls, all except the two wives (who were not Lepers) and who could do so only on market days to shop for themselves and the patients. The wives were strictly forbidden to do anything else outside the walls of the hospital. The doors of the hospital were to be kept locked from sunset until sunrise. The patients had the privilege during the hours of daylight to sit at the door, one at a time in turns, and shake “ane clapper” to attract the attention of passers buy to donate alms.

    Late 15th century image of a leper begging at the walls of a town. Again shown with long cloak and cowl, wide had and leather clapper. “Leper with a clapper”, from Bartholomeus Anglicus

    Lepers didn’t ring bells (metal and casting was very expensive), instead they had wood and leather clappers that they shook to make a loud noise. Such devices are commonly seen in medieval illustrations. The inmates at Greenside were forbidden from begging under any other circumstances and in any other manner than that which was prescribed.

    Leper clappers.

    There were no holidays for the hospital and no visitors were allowed within its walls, apart from those “placit with thame thairin at command of the said Councall and Session“. The alms collected from the door were to be shared equally and declared to the council on a weekly basis when the appointed keeper made his visit. In addition to this a pension of 4 shillings Scots (4 English pence) was provided. The only comfort afforded for them beyond this (and it would have been an important one at the time), was the appointment of “ane ordinair reider to reid the prayeris everie Sabboth to the said lepperis“; every Sunday somebody would come to read them prayers.

    It should therefore be clear that the Lepers and their wives were fundamentally locked inside the hospital on their own, to care and provide for themselves as best as they could and saw only the weekly visit of their prayer reader and council clerk. There is also every chance that not all of the Lepers even had that disease, any severe illness of the skin may have been described as such at that time and gotten you sentenced to Greenside.

    After its establishment the hospital seems to disappear from the record and it may have been that it only existed for what remained of the lives of its initial residents. The colony was likely abandoned by the early 17th century. Its last resident may have been Thomas Weir – the infamous Major Weir – in 1670, who was confined as a prisoner here untile his execution by garrotting and burning at the stake for witchcraft, bestiality, incest and adultery nearby at the Gallowlee (Shrubhill).

    The Devil’s fiery coach, which apparently conveyed Weir to Dalkeith to hear of news of the defeat of the Scots Army at the battle of Worcester

    The 2013 excavations at what was the London Road roundabout in advance of the city’s notorious tram project uncovered remains of a graveyard in this area. The archaeological write up does not mention precise dating or any signs of leprosy on the skeletons, but pottery dated the interments to between the 15th and 17th century.

    Report of the 2013 archaeological excavations at Greenside as part of the Trams project

    The Greenside Well is believed to date back to the time of the chapel / priory / hospital and may indeed have been the reason that these institutions had been established at this exact location. It existed as a public water source until the middle of the 19th century and is shown on maps of this time.

    Ainslie’s 1804 Town Plan, showing the well and an adjacent washing house. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

    In a very odd hark back to the distant past of Scotland before the Reformation, until the 20th century the Catholic Church in Rome still had an official on its payroll who was “il Padre Priori di Greenside“; the Priory Father of Greenside.

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    NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

    #Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

    #edinburgh #friary #greenside #hopsital #leprosy #publichealth
25. 

    Author Carlo Carrasco @[email protected] · 2026-04-18 · 16:00 UTC

    Philippines Falls In 2026 FDI Confidence Index

    Things are looking bad for the Philippines as the nation declined in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index ending up 18th out of the 25 emerging markets, according to a news report by BusinessWorld. It should be remembered that the Philippines attracted less than $8 billion FDI in 2025.

    To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the BusinessWorld news report. Some parts in boldface…

    THE PHILIPPINES dropped two spots to 18th out of 25 emerging markets in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index by global management consulting firm Kearney.

    The Philippines posted a score of 1.4635 in the index, which ranks markets that are likely to attract the most FDI in the next three years.

    This was the third straight year the Philippines’ ranking declined in the index. It ranked 16th in 2025, 13th in 2024 and 12th in 2023.

    “The index reflects a three-year outlook, so the shift points to softer medium-term investor confidence, rather than any single short-term factor,” Kearney Senior Partner, Philippines Country Head & APAC Communications, Media & Technology Lead Marco de la Rosa said in an e-mail interview.

    “At the same time, recent Philippine-specific developments, including headlines last year around infrastructure spending and political challenges, may have weighed on investor sentiment, alongside a more risk-sensitive global environment, making the country a relatively less attractive destination for FDI,” he added.

    The Philippines was rocked by a corruption scandal last year that linked government officials, lawmakers, and public contractors to anomalous flood control projects.

    In 2025, the Philippines saw its FDI net inflows drop 17.1% year on year to $7.791 billion. This was the lowest yearly FDI level since 2020.

    The downtrend continued at the start of this year as January FDI net inflows slid to a four‑month low of $443 million, 39.2% lower compared with the same month a year ago.

    Conducted in January 2026, the FDI Confidence Index uses primary data from a proprietary survey of 507 senior executives of the world’s top corporations.

    “China, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia lead the emerging market ranking for the third consecutive year,” Kearney said.

    Among emerging markets, the Philippines fell behind regional peers such as Thailand (6th), Malaysia (7th), Indonesia (13th) and Vietnam (16th).

    “Other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) markets have become more attractive, particularly those benefiting from supply chain shifts and stronger positioning in innovation,” Mr. de la Rosa said. “Thailand and Malaysia are benefiting from China+1 diversification, while Vietnam stands out for linking talent to a clear sector strategy, particularly in semiconductors.”

    Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development Director Ser Percival K. Peña-Reyes said that the steady decline in the index is not driven by a single factor but rather by the Philippines’ relative underperformance versus peers and persistent structural constraints.

    “The index is relative, so even if the Philippines is stable, (the fact) that other countries are rising faster pushes it down,” he said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

    According to Kearney, investors cited the Philippines’ labor talent as its strongest asset (32%), followed by natural resources (28%) and economic performance (27%).

    A fourth of the investors have identified the country’s tech innovation and ease of doing business as top reasons for investments, while 22% cited transparent governance. Only 12% cited infrastructure quality.   

    However, a small percentage or 2% said that there were no strong reasons at all to invest in the Philippines.  

    “What it suggests is that, for a small group of investors, the Philippines’ strengths may not yet be coming through as distinctly as some peers,” Mr. de la Rosa said.

    Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the Philippines can bounce back strongly on FDI soon? Do you think the Philippines is becoming the economic weakling of Southeast Asia?

    You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.

    +++++

    Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco

    #ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #blogger #blogging #business #businessNews #BusinessWorld #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #economicDynamism #economicGrowth #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #Facebook #foreignDirectInvestmentFDI #foreignInvestors #GDPGrowth #geek #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #grossDomesticProductGDP #growth #inflation #Instagram #Investagrams #investment #investors #MiddleEast #news #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Tumblr #Twitter #WordPress #WordPressCom

    #asean #asia #associationofsoutheastasiannationsasean #bing #blog #blogger
26. 

    Author Carlo Carrasco @[email protected] · 2026-04-18 · 16:00 UTC

    Philippines Falls In 2026 FDI Confidence Index

    Things are looking bad for the Philippines as the nation declined in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index ending up 18th out of the 25 emerging markets, according to a news report by BusinessWorld. It should be remembered that the Philippines attracted less than $8 billion FDI in 2025.

    To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the BusinessWorld news report. Some parts in boldface…

    THE PHILIPPINES dropped two spots to 18th out of 25 emerging markets in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index by global management consulting firm Kearney.

    The Philippines posted a score of 1.4635 in the index, which ranks markets that are likely to attract the most FDI in the next three years.

    This was the third straight year the Philippines’ ranking declined in the index. It ranked 16th in 2025, 13th in 2024 and 12th in 2023.

    “The index reflects a three-year outlook, so the shift points to softer medium-term investor confidence, rather than any single short-term factor,” Kearney Senior Partner, Philippines Country Head & APAC Communications, Media & Technology Lead Marco de la Rosa said in an e-mail interview.

    “At the same time, recent Philippine-specific developments, including headlines last year around infrastructure spending and political challenges, may have weighed on investor sentiment, alongside a more risk-sensitive global environment, making the country a relatively less attractive destination for FDI,” he added.

    The Philippines was rocked by a corruption scandal last year that linked government officials, lawmakers, and public contractors to anomalous flood control projects.

    In 2025, the Philippines saw its FDI net inflows drop 17.1% year on year to $7.791 billion. This was the lowest yearly FDI level since 2020.

    The downtrend continued at the start of this year as January FDI net inflows slid to a four‑month low of $443 million, 39.2% lower compared with the same month a year ago.

    Conducted in January 2026, the FDI Confidence Index uses primary data from a proprietary survey of 507 senior executives of the world’s top corporations.

    “China, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia lead the emerging market ranking for the third consecutive year,” Kearney said.

    Among emerging markets, the Philippines fell behind regional peers such as Thailand (6th), Malaysia (7th), Indonesia (13th) and Vietnam (16th).

    “Other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) markets have become more attractive, particularly those benefiting from supply chain shifts and stronger positioning in innovation,” Mr. de la Rosa said. “Thailand and Malaysia are benefiting from China+1 diversification, while Vietnam stands out for linking talent to a clear sector strategy, particularly in semiconductors.”

    Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development Director Ser Percival K. Peña-Reyes said that the steady decline in the index is not driven by a single factor but rather by the Philippines’ relative underperformance versus peers and persistent structural constraints.

    “The index is relative, so even if the Philippines is stable, (the fact) that other countries are rising faster pushes it down,” he said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

    According to Kearney, investors cited the Philippines’ labor talent as its strongest asset (32%), followed by natural resources (28%) and economic performance (27%).

    A fourth of the investors have identified the country’s tech innovation and ease of doing business as top reasons for investments, while 22% cited transparent governance. Only 12% cited infrastructure quality.   

    However, a small percentage or 2% said that there were no strong reasons at all to invest in the Philippines.  

    “What it suggests is that, for a small group of investors, the Philippines’ strengths may not yet be coming through as distinctly as some peers,” Mr. de la Rosa said.

    Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the Philippines can bounce back strongly on FDI soon? Do you think the Philippines is becoming the economic weakling of Southeast Asia?

    You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.

    +++++

    Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco

    #ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #blogger #blogging #business #businessNews #BusinessWorld #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #economicDynamism #economicGrowth #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #Facebook #foreignDirectInvestmentFDI #foreignInvestors #GDPGrowth #geek #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #grossDomesticProductGDP #growth #inflation #Instagram #Investagrams #investment #investors #MiddleEast #news #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Tumblr #Twitter #WordPress #WordPressCom

    #asean #asia #associationofsoutheastasiannationsasean #bing #blog #blogger
27. 

    Author Carlo Carrasco @[email protected] · 2026-04-18 · 16:00 UTC

    Philippines Falls In 2026 FDI Confidence Index

    Things are looking bad for the Philippines as the nation declined in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index ending up 18th out of the 25 emerging markets, according to a news report by BusinessWorld. It should be remembered that the Philippines attracted less than $8 billion FDI in 2025.

    To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the BusinessWorld news report. Some parts in boldface…

    THE PHILIPPINES dropped two spots to 18th out of 25 emerging markets in the 2026 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index by global management consulting firm Kearney.

    The Philippines posted a score of 1.4635 in the index, which ranks markets that are likely to attract the most FDI in the next three years.

    This was the third straight year the Philippines’ ranking declined in the index. It ranked 16th in 2025, 13th in 2024 and 12th in 2023.

    “The index reflects a three-year outlook, so the shift points to softer medium-term investor confidence, rather than any single short-term factor,” Kearney Senior Partner, Philippines Country Head & APAC Communications, Media & Technology Lead Marco de la Rosa said in an e-mail interview.

    “At the same time, recent Philippine-specific developments, including headlines last year around infrastructure spending and political challenges, may have weighed on investor sentiment, alongside a more risk-sensitive global environment, making the country a relatively less attractive destination for FDI,” he added.

    The Philippines was rocked by a corruption scandal last year that linked government officials, lawmakers, and public contractors to anomalous flood control projects.

    In 2025, the Philippines saw its FDI net inflows drop 17.1% year on year to $7.791 billion. This was the lowest yearly FDI level since 2020.

    The downtrend continued at the start of this year as January FDI net inflows slid to a four‑month low of $443 million, 39.2% lower compared with the same month a year ago.

    Conducted in January 2026, the FDI Confidence Index uses primary data from a proprietary survey of 507 senior executives of the world’s top corporations.

    “China, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia lead the emerging market ranking for the third consecutive year,” Kearney said.

    Among emerging markets, the Philippines fell behind regional peers such as Thailand (6th), Malaysia (7th), Indonesia (13th) and Vietnam (16th).

    “Other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) markets have become more attractive, particularly those benefiting from supply chain shifts and stronger positioning in innovation,” Mr. de la Rosa said. “Thailand and Malaysia are benefiting from China+1 diversification, while Vietnam stands out for linking talent to a clear sector strategy, particularly in semiconductors.”

    Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development Director Ser Percival K. Peña-Reyes said that the steady decline in the index is not driven by a single factor but rather by the Philippines’ relative underperformance versus peers and persistent structural constraints.

    “The index is relative, so even if the Philippines is stable, (the fact) that other countries are rising faster pushes it down,” he said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

    According to Kearney, investors cited the Philippines’ labor talent as its strongest asset (32%), followed by natural resources (28%) and economic performance (27%).

    A fourth of the investors have identified the country’s tech innovation and ease of doing business as top reasons for investments, while 22% cited transparent governance. Only 12% cited infrastructure quality.   

    However, a small percentage or 2% said that there were no strong reasons at all to invest in the Philippines.  

    “What it suggests is that, for a small group of investors, the Philippines’ strengths may not yet be coming through as distinctly as some peers,” Mr. de la Rosa said.

    Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the Philippines can bounce back strongly on FDI soon? Do you think the Philippines is becoming the economic weakling of Southeast Asia?

    You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.

    +++++

    Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco

    #ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #blogger #blogging #business #businessNews #BusinessWorld #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #economicDynamism #economicGrowth #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #Facebook #foreignDirectInvestmentFDI #foreignInvestors #GDPGrowth #geek #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #grossDomesticProductGDP #growth #inflation #Instagram #Investagrams #investment #investors #MiddleEast #news #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Tumblr #Twitter #WordPress #WordPressCom

    #asean #asia #associationofsoutheastasiannationsasean #bing #blog #blogger
28. 

    David Tuller @[email protected] · 2025-05-25 · 03:41 UTC

    More on the BMJ Opinion Piece from the Psychobabblers

    By David Tuller, DrPH

    When it comes to ME and ME/CFS, The BMJ—formerly called The British Medical Journal but now, like the food franchise once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, officially reduced to a mere acronym—is a long-time champion of the “biopsychosocial” ideological brigades. (I use the “scare quotes” because the term is a misnomer, given that these experts focus pretty much exclusively on the “psycho” and “social” while largely ignoring the “bio” part of the equation.) So it should not surprise anyone that The BMJ recently published yet another ignorant and misguided screed from this crew—a commissioned opinion piece titled “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” from Miller et al. (I first posted about this propaganda piece a few days ago.)

    Indeed, The BMJ, and the many other titles under the BMJ publishing umbrella, have for decades provided opportunities for the GET/CBT zealots to air their theories about deconditioning and problematic illness beliefs as causal factors for ME/CFS—theories now extended to Long Covid. A 1989 letter written by Dr Melvin Ramsey, an early ME researcher, reveals the historical nature of this prejudicial and biased approach.

    Dr. Ramsey investigated the 1950s disease outbreak at London’s Royal Free Hospital, the event that subsequently gave rise to the name “myalgic encephalomyelitis.” In 2021, an invaluable Twitter (now X) account, Royal Free 1955, which has released an impressive archive of relevant documents, posted Dr. Ramsey’s letter. In the letter, addressed to someone named Edith, Dr. Ramsey discussed the challenges he was confronting in trying to publish ME-related research. Here’s the key section:

    “For many months we have been in difficulty by the influence exerted by a psychiatrist, Dr. Simon Wessly [sic] who has secured for himself the position of referee to the BMJ whose Assistant Editor has been strongly anti-ME and we cannot get anything published in British medical journals in our favor. Simon Wessly cuts right across my fundamental tenet of “rest” for chronic M.E. cases and tries to get them admitted to Psychiatric Units where they are immediately put on vigorous exercise.”

    The BMJ’s skewed view of this issue continued during the reign of Dr Fiona Godlee, the previous editor in chief. I had many go-round with Dr Godlee, who stepped aside in 2021, over some of the nonsense published in various BMJ journals during her tenure. That included the report on the fraudulent pediatric study of the woo-woo Lightning Process conducted by Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s ethically and methodologically challenged pediatrician and grant magnet. (Professor Crawley has since retired from the university and from medical practice, for reasons that have not been publicly explained. No great loss!)

    That clinical trial, published in 2018 in BMJ’s Archives of Disease in Childhood, violated core principles of scientific research, rendering its findings unreliable and essentially uninterpretable. Specifically, the authors recruited more than half the participants before the trial was formally registered, and swapped primary and secondary outcomes after having collected much of their data. All major medical journals have policies forbidding such actions, none of which were revealed in the published trial report. The paper should clearly have been retracted. Instead, it now carries a 3,000-word correction and a 1,000-word editorial note offering tortured but unconvincing excuses for why it was re-published with the exact same findings.

    Dr Godlee’s successor was Dr. Kamran Abbasi. I have had prior dealings with Dr Abbasi as well. He was formerly the editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. During his tenure, the journal published a seriously problematic paper whose authors included Professor Sir Simon Wessely and Trudie Chalder, King’s College London’s mathematically and factually challenged professor of cognitive behavior therapy. The paper was called “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for chronic fatigue and CFS: outcomes from a specialist clinic in the UK.”

    Among other concerns, the authors made causal claims of success for their intervention even as they acknowledged that their observational study was incapable of documenting causal relationships. Dr Abbasi refused to take any corrective action. We ended up publishing our critique as a full-fledged paper in the Journal of Health Psychology.

    In other words, Dr Abbasi protected Professor Sir Simon, Professor Chalder and their colleagues from accountability for their indisputable errors. His failure to pursue the necessary steps to ensure the accuracy of the scientific literature was extremely disturbing and represented a violation of his responsibilities to both the field of medicine and the general public. Dr Abbasi’s decision revealed his true colors—and his biased approach to this issue. No one should expect anything different from him during his stewardship of the BMJ stable of publications.

    **********

    Snippets from some of the rapid responses

    The recent opinion piece has now racked up more than a dozen rapid responses, many of them quite eloquent in their expressions of dismay at the bogus arguments advanced by the authors. I’ve included a few quotes from these responses here.

    Elke Hausmann, GP in Derby: “There are thousands of us, including many doctors with Long Covid or ME, who argue that continuing to invest in researching mind/body approaches is taking away from the real research we need, into understanding the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms at play in ME and Long Covid, which has always been where progress in medicine and medical treatments has come from.”

    Tom Parsons, severe ME patient in Sussex, England: “The so-called biopsychosocial approach is continuously presented as a new and cutting-edge approach to treating people with ME/CFS when it has been the dominant treatment paradigm in this country and elsewhere since the 1990s and, in that time, its advocates have failed to produce any good quality evidence that these approaches help people recover any significant degree of functioning. To present these approaches as exciting new science is, to borrow a phrase, serving old wine in new bottles.”

    David Putrino, neuroscientist and professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, along with more than a dozen other experts and patient advocates: “Miller et al continue to promote the unsubstantiated claims that ME/CFS is deeply rooted in psychosomatic aetiology and occurs due to a combination of deconditioning and “unhelpful illness beliefs.” They argue that “the patients’ belief that they won’t recover can harm their mental wellbeing.” These assertions lack credible scientific basis, contradict current NICE guidelines, and risk causing further harm to people with ME/CFS.”

    Dom J. Salisbury, patient advocate in Lancashire, England: “In their opinion piece, Miller and coauthors ignore PEM when listing common symptoms of ME/CFS. This is an attempt to continue framing this illness as belonging to a family of ‘fatiguing conditions’, which, along with other ‘medically unexplained symptoms’, they argue can be treated with psychological interventions and rehabilitation.”

    Michiel Tack, patient in Hulst, The Netherlands: “The view that ME/CFS is maintained by unhelpful thoughts and behavior is poorly supported by current evidence and may unfairly blame patients for their illness and failure to recover. This model has been tested in the past with disappointing results, which is likely why NICE no longer recommends it.”

    (View the original post at virology.ws)

    #BMJ #FionaGodlee

    #bmj #fionagodlee
29. 

    Sordya @[email protected] · 2026-01-14 · 13:33 UTC

    Turning Saffron into Slop – Treylya Safran yn Skomblans

    Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow, the shoddiness has spiralled. 

    Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.

    There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.

    Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.

    ‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.

    Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.

    Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to be synonymous with Generative AI (GenAI) and with Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, in common parlance. Unless explicitly stated, I use the terms interchangeably.

    Kernewek is under attack. The attacker? Machine-made rubbish. Fresh from companies dictionary-bashing to make terrible ‘translations’ for their black-and-gold-washing brandification of Kernow*, the shoddiness has spiralled. 

    Error-riddled AI ‘Kernewek textbooks’ have appeared on Amazon, by ‘authors’ who are at best well-meaning but harmful and at worst out to exploit us. Worse, a prominent crackpot is ‘translating’ conspiracy theories into ‘Cornish’ en masse. It’s not just nonsensical; it ties our language to fascism faster than we, making content by hand, can work to untie it.

    There are those who believe that the best defence is to put down our shield and join the opposing forces: to ‘buy in’ to AI in the hope of coming out the other side with a useful tool for the language and a stronger community. Such hopes must be abandoned. What follows is a look why this approach is wrong-headed, as evidenced by universities, activists and indigenous groups.

    LOW-RESOURCES AND LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY

    Simply adding a language to an AI model leads to a spike in poor-quality articles, drowning out quality writing by humans. AI has “industrialized the acts of destruction—which affect vulnerable languages most, since AI translations are typically far less reliable for them.”1 Wikipedia editors from varied languages evidence that machine translation tools have made it easier than ever before to create shoddy articles in minoritised languages, causing massive damage in minutes. AI leads to non-speakers producing much longer, truthier rubbish, Sámi computational linguistics expert Trond Trosterud notes: “the problem [is] that they are armed with Google Translate. Earlier they were armed only with dictionaries.”1

    Kernewek, like all but 60 of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages, is designated “low-resource”, meaning it lacks sufficient data to train a machine.2 It is tempting, therefore, to assume that the solution is to provide more data. However, training an LLM requires petabytes of text, audio and video—manually categorised and in a machine-readable format—a vast trove that Kernewek simply does not have.3 Professor Will Lamb, Chair of Gaelic Ethnology and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, speaks of “millions of work hours devoted to just one aspect” of a working AI.4

    Even if ChatGPT is trained on another language than English, the time and labour required may make it largely unviable. Current assessments of the performance of ChatGPT for different languages have shown that it performs worse in all tasks.5

    Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab

    Furthermore, the amount of data and work is not the only barrier; at issue is the nature of the language itself. Microsoft has found that languages such as Breton—and thus Kernewek—cause a high rate of errors distinct from the size of their dataset, due to grammatical features, such as mutation, not present in well-sourced languages. As such, they remain poor without significant additional work.6 Essentially, simply adding more Kernewek may not help. Thus, engaging with AI is, for Kernewek, to tie ourselves to slop.

    Noten: Skians Kreftus (SK) re dheuth ha bos kesstyr gans SK Dinythus (SKDin) ha gans Patronyow Yeth Bras (PYB), kepar ha ChatGPT, yn lavar kemmyn. Marnas bos menegys yn kler, my a us an termys yn keschanjyadow.

    Kernewek yw yn-dann omsettyans. An omsettyer? Atal gwrys dre jynn. Nowydh devedhys a gompanis ow pylla gerlyvrow rag gul ‘treylyansow’ euthyk rag aga merkegyans yethwolghi a Gernow*, an pilyekter re wrug pesya.

    ‘Dysklyvrow’ ‘Kernewek’ gwallblagys re apperyas war Amazon, gans ‘awtours’ neb yw teg aga thowl dhe’n gwella ha drogusus aga hwans dhe’n gwettha. Lakka, yma koyntwas a vri ow ‘treylya’ tybiethow kesplottyans dhe ‘Gernewek’ yn routh. Nyns yw gocki hepken; y kelm agan yeth orth faskorieth uskissa es dell yllyn, dre wul dalgh dre leuv, oberi dh’y digelmi.

    Yma nebes a grys bos agan gwella difres gorra an skoos dhyworthyn ha junya an ostys er agan pynn: dhe ‘unverhe’ gans SK gans govenek dos yn-mes gans toul dhe les rag an yeth ha kemeneth kreffa. Res yw hepkor govenegow a’n par na. An pyth hag a sew a vir orth prag yth yw an devedhyans ma penn-gam, dell yw dustunys gans pennskolyow, gweythresoryon ha bagasow teythyek.

    ASNODHOW ISL HA TIPOLOGIETH YETHEL

    Keworra yeth yn sempel orth patron SK a led orth spik yn erthyglow drog aga kwalita, ow peudhi skrif a gwalita gans tus. SK re wrug “diwysyansegi an aktys diswrians—hag a nas yethow goliadow an moyha, drefen bos treylyansow SK lieskweyth le lel yn tipek ragdha.”1 Golegydhyon Wikipedia a yethow divers a re dustuni re wrug medhelweyth-treylya y wul bos esya dell veu bythkweth kyns gwruthyl erthyglow pilyek yn yethow lyharivhes, ow kawsya damach kowrek yn mynysennow. SK a led orth digowsoryon owth askorra atal lieskweyth hirra ha gwirekka, konnyk yethonieth reknansek Sámi Trond Trosterud a not: “an kudyn [yw] aga bos ervys gans Google Translate. A-varra nyns ens ervys marnas gans gerlyvrow.”1

    Kernewek, kepar hag oll marnas 60 a ogas lowr 7,000 yeth a’n bys, yw klassys avel “isel y asnodhow”, ow styrya nag eus dhodho kedhlow lowr dhe drenya jynn.2 Rakhenna, dynyek yw desevos bos an assoylyans profya moy a gedhlow. Byttegyns, res yw petavaytys  a dekst, son ha gwydhyow—klassys dre leuv hag yn furvas redyadow gans jynn— dhe drenya PYB, tresorva efan nag eus dhe Gernewek yn sempel.3 Y kews Professor Will Lamb, Kaderyer Ethnologieth ha Yethonieth Wodhalek orth Pennskol Karedin, a “vilvilyow a ourys ober sakrys orth unn wedh hepken” a SK owth oberi.4

    Hogen mars yw ChatGPT trenys war yeth a-der Sowsnek, an termyn hag ober yw res a styr y vos martesen anhewul dre vras. Arvreusyansow a-lemmyn a berformyans a ChatGPT rag yethow dyffrans re dhiskwedhas y perform gweth yn oberennow oll.5

    Prof. Lina Dencik, Data Justice Lab

    Pella, nyns yw an myns a gedhlow hag ober an unsel lett; a vern yw natur an yeth y honan. Microsoft re drovyas y kaws yethow kepar ha Bretonek—hag ytho Kernewek—kevradh ughel a wallow diblans a vraster aga sett kedhlow, drefen nasyow gramasek, kepar ha treylyansow, nag usi kevys yn yethow ughel aga asnodhow. Yndella, i a bes orth bos drog heb meur a ober keworransel.6 Yn essensek, possybyl yw ny wra keworra moy a Gernewek yn sempel gweres. Yndelma, oberi gans SK yw, rag Kernewek, omgelmi orth skomblans.

    CORNISH UNDER CAPITALISM

    But surely we can improve things over time? It will take a lot of help from AI companies, but it will be worth it. Sadly, Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, has found that once a tech company has established basic capabilities for a language, they pat themselves on the back and move on.7

    Big tech companies are just that: companies. They exist to make a profit. Unfortunately, a market dominated by big languages gives them no incentive to invest in improvements for small ones.

    All of the speech technology, smart homes and voice interaction systems used today are the products of commercial research. To put it bluntly, they exist to either make money from your data, to sell you more goods and services, or to influence your thinking. None of this AI exists for the public good. […] Unless there is a strong enough economic argument, don’t expect big companies to rush into producing Welsh, Gaelic or Cornish speech systems.8

    Prof. Ian McLoughlin, University of Kent

    Should they decide that a Kernewek AI is a viable profit-making enterprise, our situation may even be worse than abandonment. As Dr. Fintan Mallory remarks, the dominant means of profit for privately-funded AI enterprises is to convert their tools into surveillance devices.9 As Kernewek is currently one of the UK’s only languages which is not currently easily surveillable, this poses a huge risk to Kernewek activism and the fight for self-determination in a state that seeks to criminalise dissent.

    While we’re on the subject of Kernewek and its position under capitalism, let’s consider the human cost. I lost my 13-year career in language to AI as soon as English output became viable enough to excuse not paying a human. In the unlikely instance that we achieve an AI that can produce quality Kernewek, why would anyone bother paying speakers? The idea of AI sucking all the life out of my heritage language when we are struggling to survive as-is is appalling.

    Simply put, profit is antithetical to people. While AI is the new favourite toy of profit, it will be antithetical to people. And a language is its people.

    KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON

    Combinations of characters on a screen mean nothing without agency and intention.10

    Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance

    While language is not unique to humans, it is one of the chief parts of being human. It cannot be reduced to mere data, but is a highly social process.11 We all know how synthetic customer support via robot sounds or how AI fails to pick up nuance. As Dr. Mallory comments, “Language [is] something more like the soul of a community. You can’t store this in a machine. You can’t solve a human problem like linguicide with a view of language that removes the human component.”12

    AI cannot comprehend Kernewek or any other language. It is a stochastic parrot: predicting what word is likely to follow the previous one.13 It cannot understand us. It cannot intend anything. If it tells you it feels delighted to help you, it is lying. I want our community to grow, but one hundred ‘Cornish-speaking’ computers do not add to it. One human does—bringing ideas and hopes and fears and foibles—and I do not think the Kernewek ‘speaking’ computers will add even one human to our community. 

    Worse, if it does, there is evidence from Microsoft to suggest that the use of GenAI on language tasks, even once a week, impairs cognitive ability to learn, leading to decreased engagement with the topic, overreliance on the technology and hobbled skills in independent problem-solving.14 By using AI tools to ‘teach’ a learner Kernewek, we may in fact be impairing their ability to learn the language at all without this crutch. We will make regurgitators in place of speakers.

    Perlin also emphasises the human element, saying that when we hold community central to our languages, as we do, the stochastic parrot can feel like a violation.15 At the moment, I can tell when someone is using AI ‘Kernewek’ to me. The idea that one day I will not know when an outsider—someone I would welcome if they took up a book or a class—is puppeting my ancestors’ jaws and speaking through them is ghoulish. It has the instant sting of colonialism, of appropriation when one could appreciate, of parroting when one could join our chorus.

    Hawai’ian scholar Ha‘alilio Solomon agrees: “It is painful, because it reminds us of all the times that our culture and language has been appropriated. We have been fighting tooth and nail in an uphill climb for language revitalization.[…] People are going to think that this is an accurate representation of the Hawaiian language.”16

    TRUST AND COMMUNITY FEELING

    The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface.17

    NBC NEWS

    The explosion of insults for AI itself (clanker, tinskin, toaster), its output (slop, dross, brainrot) and its users (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—as well as others more clearly based on real-world slurs than I am comfortable to include—tells a tale of the general attitude of distrust and disgust towards the technology and its use on anglophone and other majority language internet.18 While the attitude among tech bros and corporates remains bombastic, for the general public AI is “becoming interchangeable with things that sort of suck.”19

    Further, it’s not just majority languages with this negative view of AI as taint. A quick sampling of social media comments and likes regarding AI and Scottish Gaelic by Professor Lamb showed a split of 54% negative, 33% positive and 13% neutral. (Lamb, 2024) The sentiment of the top-rated negative comment was that AI is harmful and the second-highest that AI should be kept away from heritage languages.

    What are we telling our descendants? That our language and culture isn’t worth the personal effort? That’s how I might read it, if I were them.20

    Kernewek survey respondent 

    Kernewek paints an even starker picture, especially among younger and more technologically-savvy learners and speakers. A survey on Cornish Discord and Whatsapp found that 65% felt AI would be bad (11.5%) or very bad (53%) for the language. When asked what the community response should be to AI, 46% said we should prevent it and 27% avoid it, with only over-60s thinking that we should work with it.20 

    31% of respondents said using AI in Kernewek would cause them to feel estranged from the language, while 54% said that they would feel strongly estranged and 23% a little estranged from any organisation, resource or teacher using AI. 

    The response from those who gave their knowledge of AI as either “expert” or “good” was particularly damning. Everyone in this group responded that AI would be harmful for the language, that the use of AI would estrange them from a source strongly and that we should prevent the use of AI for Kernewek.

    IDENTITY, AUTHENTICITY AND DIVERSITY

    Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, writing for UNESCO, was not speaking specifically about minoritised languages when he asked this, but the question resonates even more strongly for us: “How much loss of identity is one willing to sacrifice for efficiency?”21

    Identity is of paramount importance to Kernewek speakers. Ute Wimmer’s study Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish identified the language’s “function as a symbol of national identity” as the second highest motive (66%**) among speakers and learners, beaten only by Cornish culture (80%).22 This would seem cause for celebration, but when AI is added to the mix, it becomes a risk. Vincent Koc of Hyperlink states that AI can “inadvertently contribute to the dilution of language and cultural identity.”23

    He also identifies that automating language learning or generation “may diminish the richness and authenticity that comes from human speakers who carry cultural histories in their speech.” Indeed, four studies by the University of Southern California have shown that using LLMs to assist writing “is linked to notable declines in linguistic diversity and may interfere with the societal and psychological insights language provides.”24

    This is in English, one of the richest and largest languages in the world. Imagine the possible impact on a smaller language like Kernewek—with less documentation, less data, a tiny speakerbase and basically no money—and on its many language varieties and orthographies. Particular to the Kernewek context, Late speakers are already struggling to be seen as valid under the dominance of Middle. Do we think AI knows the difference? Thoughtlessly, it will either mix everything together, confusing everyone, or it will use Middle to overwhelm Late.

    Generative AI-driven content creation, by favoring standardized languages, risks the disappearance of regional dialects.25

    Barcelona supercomputing Center ….
    

    Not only are varieties at risk; AI threatens to drown Kernewek as a whole. Perlin agrees that the linguistic flattening that occurred over centuries in English could manifest overnight in a minoritised language with AI at the helm—as it would be, being able to effortlessly outstrip human Kernewek. He raises concerns of LLMs freezing a language in place and even defining what it means to know the language, especially with low numbers of native speakers.26

    Garbage translations multiply online like fake news. Native speakers of the languages in question are bypassed as being “too hard to find,” compared with automated methods of vetting that are completely disconnected from real-life communication. While larger and more powerful language communities may be able to hold the bots to account and even make strategic use of them, it is all too easy to imagine [a minority language] being overwhelmed.26

    Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance

    Uncontrolled and in the hands of tech giants, synthetic Kernewek will outnumber and outmanoeuvre human Kernewek.

    DATA SOVEREIGNTY AND COLONIALISM

    Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of [an indigenous nation] to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data.27

    Native Nations Institute

    There are, however, indigenous cultures that are working on a more equitable relationship with AI. Tech without the giant requires resources, but it allows communities to retain data sovereignty over the cultural asset that is their language. Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, has created a list of principles for the creation, use and sharing of Māori data, prioritising the need to enhance control for current and future Māori. 

    They raise a key point that should be considered carefully by stewards of linguistic and cultural knowledge: “Data from us, and about us and our resources, are valuable assets. Once control of it is lost, it is difficult to regain.”28 Decisions must not be taken lightly or hastily; we can always say “yes” if we have previously said “no” to a particular dataset’s use, but can never say “no” if we have already said “yes”.

    The AI field, like any other space, is occupied by people who are set in their ways and unintentionally have a very colonial perspective.29

    Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality

    This is vital in the context of the potential control of Kernewek data by powerful external corporations. Capitalist extractivism has long been a bane on societies in the imperial periphery and our Cornish society is no different, having faced centuries of its wealth and natural resources being stripped and sold by and large for the profit of those outside Cornwall.

    The book Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy notes that current data relations can be seen as “a continuation of the processes and underlying belief systems of extraction, exploitation, accumulation and dispossession that have been visited on Indigenous populations through historical colonialism.”30 This extractive understanding of information is, they note, not disrupted but rather replicated by paying people for their data.

    Ultimately, our language must not lie in outside hands governed by proprietary principles that do not allow us sufficient sovereignty over one of our most valuable natural resources: our language. We must have open data principles, not bow to corporate control. We must steer and steward the use of our data, rather than expose it to use against our interests and for the pockets of big tech.

    Rather than approaching language preservation as a technical problem, I think indigenous communities need to be politically empowered, whether that be funding from governments or legal protections to use their languages.31

    Dr. Fintan Mallory, Durham University

    We must prioritise language-as-community and seek open, equitable and ethical use of our language, heritage and other cultural assets. We must avoid thinking of AI as the magic that it promises and invest in basic research, driven by our own community. Corporations will not save us and, indeed, may do us great harm.

    NO CORNISH ON A DEAD PLANET

    Global capitalism and governments […] are addicted to ‘free’ market ideology over the wellbeing of communities, people and the planet.32

    Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022

    Honestly, most takedowns of AI would have hit this point already. It’s one of the main arguments against Generative AI, but in case you’re not familiar with it, we will briefly look over the main points.

    Water used in cooling AI data centers must be drinkable water. AI guzzles this water. The University of California has reported that “global water demand from AI could reach 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027. That exceeds 50 percent of the UK’s annual water use in 2023.”33 All this while the Global Commission on the Economics of Water has declared “a rapidly accelerating water crisis” to which Kernewek should not be contributing.34

    We have become utterly dependent on private technologies manufactured and controlled by a handful of opaque companies [who] appear mostly indifferent to the social consequences of their activities and only invest minimally if obliged by government regulations to enhance their public image.35

    Iker Erdocia, Dublin City University

    AI requires vast quantities of hardware at the cost of mining rare earth minerals. These are difficult to extract and purify and come with heavy environmental and social costs. They are often extracted from mines in countries with poorer environmental and labour protections. Reset states that “communities living near these mines, often indigenous or minority groups, regularly face land degradation, water contamination and human rights abuses. Much of this can be directly linked to the AI hardware.”36 When the hardware inevitably cooks and is useless, it is then thrown out as e-waste into poor communities. The potential advancement of Kernewek must not come at the expense of our sister indigenous and minority communities.

    Training an also AI requires huge amounts of energy, soon perhaps as much as a small country37 and has an enormous carbon footprint.38 What is clear is that—through water usage, extractive industry, energy consumption and carbon footprint—AI is bad news for the struggling environment of the planet we live on and there is no Cornish on a dead planet.

    MAKING AI AN EX-PARROT

    Rather than making minority languages more accessible, AI is now creating an ever expanding minefield for students and speakers of those languages to navigate.39

    mit technology review

    We have heard of the vast improbability of getting AI to be able to mimic Kernewek in light of the costs in data, work, time and technology. We have considered the likely choice of cold negligence or surveillance product and the importance of data sovereignty. We have read about the effects on the livelihoods of Cornish speakers, as well as the the catastrophic costs to the environment and indigenous peoples.

    We have learned that linguistic flattening by AI impoverishes its subjects and how AI may decide for us how our language must operate. We have seen the inescapability of language as human and the risks of creating ‘learners’ who cannot learn and ‘speakers’ who cannot speak. We have seen the dangers to reputation and trust for any organisation who would shovel what is seen as ‘slop’.

    We have heard why giving in to the juggernaut of AI would be a mistake for Kernewek and how our community does not support our laying down of the shield. Instead, we must fight. We must make Kernewek a space as free of slop as possible, we must educate botlickers into ethical and effective language learning and use, we must avoid second-hand thinking. 

    We must make our language a no AI zone, a network of reliable humans and their human creations, built on authenticity, community, effort and trust: a Kernewek for the people, of the people and by the people.

    KERNEWEK YN-DANN GEVALAV

    Mes yn sur y hyllyn ni gwellhe taklow dres termyn? Y fydh res meur a weres a gompanis SK, mes y talvia dhyn. Yn trist, Gabriel Nicholas, kesvroder hwithrans orth an Center for Democracy and Technology, re drovyas pan wrug kompani tek fondya gallosow selyek rag unn yeth, i a omgeslowenha yn ughel hag ena movya yn-rag.7

    Kompanis tek bras yw yndella poran: kompanis. Ymons i ena rag gwaynya budh. Y’n gwettha prys, ny wra marghas rewlys gans yethow bras ri kentryn dhe gevarghewi yn gwellhe rag an re byghan.

    Oll a’n deknegieth kows, chiow konnyk ha systemow ynterweythres lev usys hedhyw yw an askorrasow a hwithrans kenwerthel. Dhe vos sogh, yth yns i po rag dendyl arghans a’th kedhlow, po gwertha gwara ha gonisyow, po delenwel dha dybyansow. Nyns yw tra vyth a’n SK ma rag an les kemmyn. […] Mar nag eus argyans erbysek krev lowr, na wra gwaytya kompanis bras dhe fyski dhe askorra systemow kows Kembrek, Godhalek po Kernewek.8

    Prof. Ian McLoughlin, pennskol kint

    Ha mars ervirons bos SK Kernewek aventur a yll gwaynya budh, possybyl yw bos agan studh gweth ages dell via gans forsakyans. Dell lever Dr. Fintan Mallor, an fordh vrassa a waynya budh rag kompanis SK arghesys yn privedh yw kedreylya aga thoulys yn devisyow aspians.9 Drefen bos Kernewek onan a’n yethow boghes y’n RU nag yw aspiadow yn es y’n eur ma, hemm yw peryl kowrek rag gweythresieth Kernewek ha’gan strif a-barth omdhetermyans yn stat a vynn galweythegi dissent.

    Ha ni ow tochya Kernewek ha’y savla yn-dann gevalav, gwren ni mires orth an kost denel. My a gellis ow soodh 13 bloodh yn yethow dhe SK kettooth ha dell veu eskorrans Sowsnek hewul lowr dhe askusya sevel orth tyli den. Y’n kas diwirhaval may kevyn SK hag a yll askorra Kernewek da, prag y hwrussa nebonan omankombra ow pe kowser? An tybyans a SK ow tenna oll an bewnans a’m taves ertach ha ni ow kwynnel dhe dreusvewa dell on yw skruthus.

    Yn sempel, budh yw gorthenebel orth tus. Hedre vo SK an degen nowydh flamm a vudh, y fydh gorthenebel orth tus. Ha yeth yw hy thus.

    KENEDHEL HEB YETH, KENEDHEL HEB KOLON

    Nyns eus styr dhe gesunyansow a lytherennow war skrin heb dewis ha heb mynnas.10

    Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance

    Kyn nag yw yeth dibarow dhe dhensys, onan a’n rannow chif a vos denel yw. Ny yll bos lehes dhe gedhlow hepken, mes yth yw argerdh sosyel dres eghen.11 Ni oll a wor py mar synthesek y sen skoodhyans prener der SK po fatel yll SK fyllel orth konvedhes arliwyow. Dell gampol Dr. Mallory, “Yeth [yw] neppyth moy kepar hag enev a gemeneth. Ny yllir gwitha hemma yn jynn. Ny yllir assoylya kudyn denel kepar ha yethladhans gans gwel a yeth hag a remov an gerann denel.”12

    Ny yll SK konvedhes Kernewek po taves vyth aral. Papynjay chonsus yw: y targan py ger yw gwirhaval wosa an huni kyns.13 Ny yll agan konvedhes. Ny yll mynnes tra vyth. Mar kwra derivas orthis y vos pes da dha weres, gow yw. My a vynn agan kemeneth dhe devi, mes ny wra kans jynn-amontya a yll ‘kewsel Kernewek’ keworra orti. Y hwra unn den—ow tri tybyansow ha govenegow hag ownow ha gwanderyow—ha ny dybav y hwra an jynnys-amontya kernwegorek keworra unn den hogen orth agan kemeneth.

    Gwettha, mar kwra, yma dustuni a-dhyworth Microsoft hag a brof y hwra an devnydh a SKDin war oberennow yeth, unweyth an seythen hogen, aperya gallos godhvosel a dhyski, ow ledya orth omworrans lehes gans an desten, gorfydhyans y’n deknegieth ha sleyneth sprallys a assoylya kudynnow yn anserghek.14 Der usya toulys SK dhe ‘dhyski’ Kernewek, possybyl yw ni dhe shyndya gallos dyski an yeth vytholl heb an kroch ma. Ni a wra gul mimyoryon yn le Kernewegoryon.

    Ynwedh Perlin a boslev an elven dhenel, ow leverel pan wren ni synsi kemeneth avel kres agan yethow, dell wren, an papynjay chonsus a yll bos klewys kepar ha defolyans.15 Y’n eur ma, my a aswon pan eus nebonan owth usya ‘Kernewek’ SK dhymm. An tybyans ny wrav vy unn jydh godhvos pan eus estren—nebonan a wrussen vy dynerghi mar pe lyver po klass ganses—ow popettya diwawen ow hengerens ha kewsel dresta yw bedhrosus. Yma dhe’n dra an wan dhistowgh a drevesigeth, a berghenegyans pan yllir gwerthveurhe, a bapynjaya pan yllir junya agan kesgan.

    Unver yw skolheyk Hawai’i henwys Noah Ha‘alilio Solomon: “Ankensi yw, drefen ni dhe vos kofhes a’n prysyow oll re beu agan gonisogeth ha yeth perghenegys. Ni re beu owth omladh dre dhens hag ewines yn batel gales a-barth dasvewheans yeth.[…] Y hwra pobel krysi bos hemma representyans ewn a’n yeth a Hawai’i.”16

    TREST HAG OMGLEWANS AN GEMENETH

    Hir re beu an kil-lash gorthjynn ow kovryjyon mes lemmyn yma va ow terri an arenep dell hevel.17

    NBC NEWS

    Tardh an arvedhennow rag SK y honan (clanker, tinskin, toaster), y askorras (slop, dross, brainrot) ha’y usyoryon (slopper, groksucker, botlicker, second-hand thinker)—keffrys hag erel selys moy yn kler war geryow kas gwir dell ov attes gans aga heworra—a re hwedhel a stons ollgemmyn a wogrys ha divlases war-tu hag an deknegieth ha’y devnydh war an kesrosweyth Sowsnek ha yethow bras erel.18 Kynth yw an stons yn-mysk gwesyon dek ha korforeth hwath gwresek, rag an boblek gemmyn y hwra SK “dos ha bos keschanjyadow gans taklow tamm kawgh.”19

    Pella, nyns yw marnas yethow moyhariv gans an gwel negedhek ma a SK avel podrek. Sampel uskis a gampollow media sosyel ha meusi ow tochya SK ha Godhalek Alban gans Professor Lamb a dhiskwedhas fals a 54% negedhek, 33% posedhek ha 13% heptu. (Lamb, 2024) Sentiment an kampol negedhek an moyha talvesys o bos SK dregynnus hag an nessa y talvia dhyn lettya SK rag kestav gans tavosow ertach.

    Pyth eson ni ow leverel orth agan diyskynysi? Ny dal agan yeth ha gonisogeth an strivyans personel? Hemm yw martesen fatel wrussen vy y redya, a pen vy i.20

    Gorthebydh sondyans Kernewek

    Kernewek a baynt aven moy serth, yn arbennik gans dyskoryon ha kowsoryon yowynka ha moy skentel gans tek. Sondyans war Discord ha Whatsapp Kernewek a drovyas bos 65% a grysis y fia SK drog (11.5%) po pur dhrog (53%) rag an yeth. Pan veu govynnys pyth a dal bos gorthyp an gemeneth orth SK, 46% a leveris y kodh y hedhi ha 27% y woheles, gans an dus moy ha 60 bloodh hepken ow tybi y kodh oberi ganso.20

    31% a worthebydhyon an sondyans a leveris y hwrussa an devnydh a SK yn Kernewek aga fellhe a’n yeth, hag ynwedh 54% a leveris y fiens i pellhes yn krev ha 23% pellhes tamm a by kowethas, asnodh po dyskador pynag ow tevnydhya SK.

    An gorthyp a’n re a leveris bos aga godhvos a SK po “konnyk” po “da” o dampnus yn arbennik. Pubonan y’n bagas ma a worthebis y fia SK dregynnus rag Kernewek, y hwrussa an devnydh a SK gans pennfenten aga fellhe a’n bennfenten na yn krev hag y kodh dhyn hedhi an devnydh a SK rag Kernewek.

    HONANIETH, LELDER HA DIVERSETH

    Nyns esa Aristotelis Ioannis Paschalidis, ow skrifa a-barth UNESCO, ow kewsel yn komparek a-dro dhe yethow lyharivhes pan wrug ev y wovyn, mes an govyn a dhassen yn kreffa ragon: “Pygemmys koll a honanieth a vynnir sakrifia rag effeythuster?”21

    Honanieth yw a’n moyha bri rag Kernewegoryon. Studhyans Ute Wimmer Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish a henow “gweythres [an yeth] avel arwodh a honanieth kenedhlek” avel an nessa ughella skila (66%**) yn-mysk kowsoryon ha dyskoryon, fethys gans gonisogeth Kernow (80%) hepken.22 Yth havalsa hemma bos acheson solempnyans, mes pan vo SK keworrys, y teu ha bos peryl. Vincent Koc a Hyperlink a lever y hyll SK “kevri dre wall orth an gwannheans a yeth ha honanieth wonisogethel”.23

    Ev a aswon ynwedh y hallsa awtomategi dyski po dinythi yeth “lehe an rychedh ha lelder hag a dheu a gowsoryon dhenel neb a dheg istoriow gonisogethel y’ga hows”. Yn hwir, peswar studhyans gwrys gans Pennskol Kaliforni Soth re dhiskwedhas bos devnydhya PYB dhe weres gans skrifa “kelmys orth dyfygyansow nosedhek yn diverseth yethel hag y hyll mellya gans an konvedhes brysoniethel ha kowethasel yw proviys gans yeth.”24

    Ha hemm yw yn Sowsnek, onan a’n yethow an ryccha ha brassa y’n bys. Dismyk an effeyth war yeth byghanna kepar ha Kernewek—gans le a dhogvennans, le a gedhlow, sel kowsoryon munys hag ogas hag arghans mann—ha war y lies orgraf hag eghen yeth. Yn arbennik yn gettesten Kernewek, seulabrys yma kowsoryon Diwedhes ow strivya dhe vos gwelys avel vas gans gwartheyvans Kres. A dybyn y hwor SK an dyffrans? Heb preder, y hwra po kemyska puptra warbarth, ow sowdheni pubonan, po devnydhya Kres dhe fetha Diwedhes.

    An gwruthyl a dhalgh herdhys gans SK Dinythus, dre favera yethow savonegys, a argyl an vansyans a rannyethow ranndiryel.25

    Kresen woramontyorieth Barcelona

    Nyns yw eghennow hepken yn peryl; SK a wodros beudhi Kernewek yn tien. Akordys yw Perlin y hallsa an platheans yethel a hwarva dres kansbledhynnyow yn Sowsnek hwarvos dres nos yn yeth lyharivhes gans SK orth an fronnow—dell via, ow pos gallosek a bassya Kernewek denel heb assay. Ev a venek prederow yn kever PYB ow rewi yeth yn hy le ha hogen ow settya pyth yw an styr a wodhvos an yeth, yn arbennik gans niverow munys a gowsoryon deythyek.26

    Treylyansow leun a atal a liesha warlinen kepar ha nowodhow fug. Kowsoryon deythyek a’n yethow ma yw passyes avel bos “re gales dhe drovya”, komparys orth fordhow awtomategys a surheans kwalita hag yw disjunys yn tien a geskomunyans y’n bys gwir. Kynth yw possybyl rag kemenethow yeth brassa ha moy gallosek synsi an bottys ma dhe akont ha’ga devnydhya yn stratejek hogen, re es yw dismygi [yeth lyhariv] ow pos reverthys.26

    Ross Perlin, Endangered Language Alliance

    Heb kontrol hag yn diwla an gewri deknegieth, Kernewek synthesek a wra gornivera ha gorthrabellhe Kernewek denel.

    SOVRANEDH KEDHLOW HA KOLONEGIETH

    Sovranedh kedhlow teythyek yw an gwir gans [kenedhel teythyek] a woverna an kuntel, perghenogeth ha gweytha a’y hedhlow hy honan.27

    Native Nations Institute

    Byttegyns, yma gonisogethow teythyek hag usi owth oberi war geskowethyans moy ewnhynsek gans SK. Tek heb an kowr a res asnodhow, mes y as kemenethow gwitha sovranedh kedhlow war an gerthen wonisogethel hag yw aga yeth. Te Mana Raraunga, Rosweyth Sovranedh Kedhlow Māori, re wrug rol a bennrewlys rag an gwruthyl, devnydhya ha kevrenna a gedhlow Māori, ow ragwirhe an edhom a grefhe maystri rag Māori a-lemmyn hag a dheu.

    I a venek poynt posek hag a dalvia bos konsidrys gans rach gans stywards a skians yethel ha gonisogethel: “Kedhlow ahanan, a-dro dhyn ha’gan asnodhow, yw kerthennow a bris. Pan vo maystri kellys, kales yw y dhaskemeres.”28 Ny dal gul erviransow yn skav po yn uskis; y hyllyn pupprys leverel “ea” mar kwrussyn leverel “na” kyns orth us sett kedhlow, mes ny yllyn nevra leverel “na” mar kwrussyn leverel “ea” seulabrys.

    An desten SK, kepar ha pub le aral, yw leun a dus hag yw settys y’ga maneryow ha gans gwel pur drevesigel yn tidowl.29

    Michael Running Wolf, First Languages AI Reality

    Hemm yw pur bosek y’n gettesten a’n kontrol possybyl a gedhlow Kernewek gans korforethow gallosek a-ves. Estenegieth jatelydhek re beu molleth war gowethasow y’n amal emperourethek ha nyns yw kowethas Kernewek dyffrans, wosa enebi kansvledhynnyow a’y rychys hag asnodhow naturek ow pos destryppys ha gwerthys dre vras gans budh tus yn-mes a Gernow.

    An lyver henwys Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy a verk lemmyn y hyllir gweles perthynyansow kedhlow avel “pesyans a’n argerdhow ha systemow-krysi isworwedhek a estennans, drogusyans, kuntellyans ha diberghenogeth re beu gwrys war boblansow Teythyek dres trevesigeth istorek.”30 An konvedhes estennek ma a gedhlow yw, dell verkons, hevelebys a-der goderrys gans tyli pobel rag aga hedhlow.

    Wostiwedh, res yw ma na vo agan yeth gorrys yn diwla a-ves routys gans pennrewlys perghenogel na as dhyn sovranedh lowr a onan a’gan asnodhow naturel an moyha posek: agan yeth. Res yw dhyn kavos pennrewlys kedhlow ygor, a-der plegya orth kontrol korforethel. Res yw dhyn lewya ha gidya an devnydh a’gan kedhlow, a-der y usya erbynn agan lesow ha rag pocketys tek bras.

    A-der drehedhes an arwithans a davosow avel kudyn teknegiethel, my a dyb bos res dhe gemenethow teythyek bos reythhes yn politek, po der arghasans a wovernansow po dre dhifresyansow laghel dhe dhevnydhya aga yethow.31

    Dr. Fintan Mallory, Pennskol Durham

    Res yw dhyn ragwirhe yeth-avel-kemeneth ha hwilas devnydh ygor, ewnhynsek hag ethegel a’gan kerthennow yeth, ertach ha gonisogethel. Res yw dhyn goheles tybi a SK avel an hus mayth ambos ha kevarghewi yn hwithrans selyek, lewys gans agan kemeneth. Ny wra korforethow agan selwel ha, hogen, i a yll agan shyndya.

    NYNS EUS KERNEWEK WAR BLANET MAROW

    Governansow ha kevalav ollvysel […] yw omres dhe ideologieth marghas ‘rydh’ moy es dell yns omres dhe sewena kemenethow, pobel ha’n planet.32

    Cymdeithas yr Iaith Maniffesto 2022

    An brassa rann a vreusyansow a SK a wrussa meneges hemma seulabrys. Onan a’n argyansow brassa yw erbynn SK Dinythus, mes rag own bos ankoth dhis, ni a wra mires orth an chif boyntys.

    Res yw bos evadow an dowr goyeynhe pub kresen kedhlow SK. Y kollenk an dowr ma. Pennskol Kaliforni re dherivas “y hallsa demond dowr ollvysel SK hedhes 4.2-6.6 bilvil metrow kubek erbynn 2027. Henn yw moy es 50 kansran a us dowr bledhynnyek an RU yn 2023.”33 Y kettermyn, an Desedhek Ollvysel Erbysieth Dowr a dheklaryas “barras dowr ow tardha yn uskis” ma na dal Kernewek kevri dhodho.34

    Ni re dheuth ha bos yn hwir omres dhe deknegiethow privedh gwrys ha kontrolys gans dornas a gompanis diskler [hag] a hevel bos mygyl dre vras orth an sewyansow sosyel a’ga gwriansow ha kevri yn ispoyntel  marnas mars yns i konstrinys gans rewlys an wovernans dhe wellhe aga imach poblek.35

    Iker Erdocia, Pennskol Sita Dulyn

    Yma edhom dhe SK a vynsow kowrek a galesweyth orth kost palas monyow tanow. Kales yw estenna ha purhe an re ma hag yma kostow kerghynedhel ha sosyel poos. Estennys yns i yn fenowgh a hwelyow yn powyow gans difresyansow lakka rag lavur ha’n kerghynnedh. Reset a lever “yn fenowgh y hwra kemenethow yw trigys yn ogas dhe’n hwelyow, yn fenowgh bagasow lyhariv po teythyek, enebi gwethheans an tir, defolyans an dowr hag abusyans gwiryow denel. Meur a hemma a yll bos kelmys yn tidro orth an galesweyth SK.”36 Pan yw an galesweyth kegys yn sertan hag euver, ena tewlys yw avel e-wast yn kemenethow boghosek. Res yw nyns yw an avonsyans possybyl a Gernewek orth kost agan kemenethow hwor lyhariv ha teythyek.

    Ynwedh res yw myns hujes a nerth rag trenya SK, yn skon martesen an keth myns ha pow byghan37 hag yma ol troos karbon kowrek.38 Kler yw—der usadow dowr, diwysyans estennek, konsumyans nerth hag ol troos karbon—bos SK yeyn nowodhow rag kerghynnedh ow strivya a’n planet mayth on ni trigys warnodho ha nyns eus Kernewek war blanet marow.

    GUL DHE SK BOS EKS-PAPYNJAY

    A-der gul dhe yethow lyhariv bos moy hedhadow, lemmyn yma SK ow kwruthyl tardhek pupprys owth omlesa rag studhyoryon ha kowsoryon a’n yethow ma dhe wolya.39

    mit technology review

    Ni re glewas a’n anwirhevelepter efan a wul dhe SK gallos mimya Kernewek yn golow an kostys yn kedhlow, ober, termyn ha teknegieth. Ni re gonsidras lycklod an dewisynter dispresyans yeyn po askorras-aspia ha’n posekter a sovranedh kedhlow. Ni re redyas a-dro dhe’n effeythyow war vewnansow Kernewegoryon, keffrys ha’n kostys katastrofek rag an kerghynnedh ha poblow teythyek.

    Ni re dhyskas y hwra platheans yethel gans SK boghosekhe y destennow ha fatel yll SK martesen ervira a’gan parth fatel godh dh’agan yeth oberi. Ni re welas an anwoheladewder a yeth avel denel ha’n peryllyow a wul ‘dyskoryon’ na yll dyski ha ‘kowsoryon’ na yll kewsel. Ni re welas an peryllyow orth bri ha fydhyans rag kowethasow a wrussa palas an pyth hag yw gwelys avel ‘skomblans’.

    Ni re glewas prag y fia omblegya orth an jagganat a SK error rag Kernewek ha dell na vynn agan kemeneth skoodhya gorra an skoos a-dhyworthyn. Yn y le, res yw dhyn batalyas. Res yw dhyn gul dhe Gernewek bos spas mar rydh a skomblans dell yll bos, res yw adhyski orth botlapyoryon yn dyski ha devnydh yeth yn ethegel hag yn effeythus, res yw goheles tybi wortaswerth.

    Res yw dhyn gul dh’agan yeth bos parth heb SK, rosweyth a dus fydhyadow ha’ga gwriansow denel, drehevys war lelder, kemeneth, assay ha trest: Kernewek hag yw a-barth an bobel, a’n bobel ha gans an bobel.

    Niwlen Ster

    Notennow

    * A prime example is the laughably-unaffordable restaurant RenMor, which The Headland Hotel thinks is a version of “Re’n Mor”, which they believe means “by the sea” as in “next to the sea” but actually means “by the sea!” like saying “by Zeus!”. This is both hilarious and enraging.

    ** A figure perhaps lower than it should be if you consider that many of the “emotional motives” which were not counted in this category, such as “I’m Cornish, what better reason do you need?”, do also refer to identity.

    FENTENNOW

    1. Judah, J. (2025) How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral, MIT Technology Review.
    2. Ackermann, A. (2023) When AI doesn’t speak your language, Coda.
    3. Crichton, D. (2024) AI and the Death of Human Languages, Lux.
    4. Lamb, W. (2024). Could Artificial Intelligence save Scottish Gaelic?, The University of Edinburgh.
    5. Dencik, L. (/2025) AI Inequalities: Minority Languages, TUC Cymru.
    6. Joshi, P., Santy, S., Budhiraja, A., Bali, K., & Microsoft Research, India. (2020). The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World. Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
    7. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
    8. McLoughlin, I. (2018) How to teach AI to speak Welsh (and other minority languages), The Conversation.
    9. Mallory, F. (2025) RISE UP Panel Discussion & Q&A: What AI Can and Cannot Do for Minoritised Languages, YouTube.
    10. Perlin, R. (2024) AI Won’t Protect Endangered Languages, The Dial.
    11. RISE UP (2025) #4 RISE UP Event Summary: What AI Can and Cannot Do For Minoritised Languages, RISE UP.
    12. Mallory, F. (2024) European Day of Languages: Will lesser spoken languages soon only be kept alive by AI technology? Durham University.
    13. Bender, E., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Mitchell, M. (2021) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
    14. Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025) The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. Microsoft.
    15. Perlin, R. (op cit)
    16. Judah, J. (op cit)
    17. Abbruzzese, J., & Wile, R. (2025) Is an AI backlash brewing? What ‘clanker’ says about growing frustrations with emerging tech, NBC News.
    18. Webster, K. (2025) Why Using ChatGPT at Work Could Hurt Your Reputation, Inc. Magazine.
    19. Herrman, J. (2024) Is That AI? Or Does It Just Suck?, Intelligencer.
    20. Wilson, L. (2025) Skians Kreftus ha Kernewek/Artificial Intelligence and Cornish
    21. Paschalidis, A. I. (2025) AI and the great linguistic flattening, UNESCO.
    22. Wimmer, U. (2010). Reversing Language Shift: the Case of Cornish. Cornish Language Board, p. 113
    23. Koc, V. (2025) Generative AI and Large Language Models in Language Preservation: Opportunities and Challenges, ResearchGate.
    24. Sourati, Z., Karimi-Malekabadi, F., & Ozcan, M. (2025) The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models, ResearchGate.
    25. Melero, M. (2024) The Future of Language (and Cultural) Diversity in the Age of AI, CLARIN.
    26. Perlin, R. (op cit)
    27. Russo Carroll, S., Rodriguez Lonebear, D., & Martinez, A. (2017). Data Governance for Native Nation Rebuilding, Native Nations Institute.
    28. Te Mana Raraunga. (2018). Frequently Asked Questions, Te Mana Raraunga.
    29. Ackermann, A. (op cit)
    30. Walter, M., Kukutai, T., Carroll, S. R., & Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (Eds.). (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Taylor & Francis, p. 24
    31. Mallory, F. (op cit)
    32. Cymdeithas yr Iaith (2022) Cymru Rydd, Cymru Werdd, Cymru Gymraeg., p. 27
    33. O’Sullivan, L. (2025). How AI’s Failure on Linguistic Diversity is Deepening Global Inequality, RESET – Digital for Good.
    34. Harvey, F. (2024). Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years, The Guardian.
    35. Erdocia, I., Migge, B., & Schneider, B. (2024). Language is not a data set—Why overcoming ideologies of dataism is more important than ever in the age of AI. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 28(5), p. 23
    36. O’Sullivan, L. (op cit)
    37. Erdenesanaa, D. (2023) A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country, The New York Times
    38. Heikkilä, M. (2022) We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint, MIT Technology Review.
    39. Judah, J. (op cit)

    #4 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Breus #Cornish #Cornwall #data #generativeAI #history #jynn #kedhlow #Kernewek #Kernow #Kernowek #LLM #machine #PYB #SK #SKDinythus #SkiansKreftus #Sordya

    #ai #artificialintelligence #breus #cornish #cornwall #data
30. 

    Ozymandias @[email protected] · 2025-11-03 · 11:48 UTC

    RELX | Reed Elsevier Drives Global Innovation Through Purpose-Driven Tech Careers

    RELX | Reed Elsevier, the shared services arm of RELX, a leading global information and analytics company, reinforces its position as the Philippines’ premier destination for impactful technology careers.

    As the company’s Philippine operations continue to drive innovation for global markets, RELX | Reed Elsevier demonstrates how meaningful tech roles extend far beyond traditional coding to create solutions that advance different sectors across the globe.

    “Our purpose is to benefit society by developing products that help researchers advance scientific knowledge; doctors and nurses improve the lives of patients; lawyers promote the rule of law; and consumers make informed decisions,” according to RELX’s global purpose statement.

    “This commitment to using data and analytics for good defines who we are as a company.”

    https://twitter.com/tbcnewsph/status/1963819060485050703

    Tech for Good: Global Impact from the Philippines

    RELX’s Philippine teams contribute to solutions that address some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Their work supports scientific research that leads to medical breakthroughs, enables legal systems to operate more efficiently, and helps organizations make data-driven decisions that benefit society.

    Through its Philippine hub spanning Manila, Iloilo, Cebu, and Davao, RELX | Reed Elsevier connects Filipino tech talent with projects that have immediate global impact.

    From supporting AI-powered analytics for healthcare research to helping create digital solutions that help legal professionals navigate complex cases, the company’s technology teams are at the forefront of innovations that shape entire industries.

    Guided by RELX’s global purpose to “enable professionals and businesses to make better decisions, get better results, and be more productive,” the Philippine teams exemplify how technology can drive positive change on a global scale.

    Central to RELX | Reed Elsevier’s success is its award-winning workplace culture, which earned the company the recognition as one of the Top 3 Inspiring Workplaces in Asia by the Inspiring Workplaces Group in its 2025 rankings.

    The company’s commitment to employee development is exemplified through One RELX | Reed Elsevier University (ORU), which has trained employees across five specialized learning divisions. These programs range from core professional skills to advanced courses in AI, machine learning, data analytics, and business skills. 

    This culture also fosters comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that create a workplace culture of belonging. This culminates in RELX | Reed Elsevier’s Employee Resource Groups, namely Women’s Circle, Pride Circle, Enabled (Disability), Mosaic (Multiculturalism), and Soul Circle (Religious Tolerance).

    This fosters an environment where diverse perspectives drive better technology solutions.

    “Every day across RELX, our employees are inspired to undertake initiatives that make unique contributions to society and the communities in which we operate,” the company’s global EVP affirms—an ethos clearly reflected in the inclusive culture nurtured within RELX | Reed Elsevier.

    “Our people are our greatest asset, and we invest in them accordingly,” said Albert Villagracia, Vice President for Human Resources at RELX | Reed Elsevier. “More than career opportunities, we provide career transformation, enabling our talent to grow alongside the rapidly evolving tech landscape.”

    https://twitter.com/tbcnewsph/status/1963818829152178208

    Servant Leadership that Values Employees

    This people-first culture extends naturally into RELX | Reed Elsevier’s progressive approach to leadership development, which prioritizes service over hierarchy. The company embeds servant leadership principles into its management framework, emphasizing humility, active listening, and employee support over traditional command-and-control styles.

    “I’ve had supportive managers and mentors who encouraged me to pursue certifications, pitch improvements, and present solutions that impact multiple teams,” shared Elaiza, a Data Analyst turned Business Analyst and Project Manager at RELX | Reed Elsevier. “It made me realize how much growth is possible when you step outside your comfort zone with the right support to guide you.”

    This approach mirrors RELX’s broader vision of responsible leadership—empowering people and promoting innovation that benefits both customers and society.

    As RELX | Reed Elsevier continues to expand its Philippine operations, the company remains committed to fostering talent across software engineering, data science, AI/ML engineering, product development, and digital innovation roles.

    The organization’s approach to attracting professionals centers on demonstrating how technology careers can extend beyond traditional boundaries to create meaningful global impact.

    “Our purpose guides our actions beyond the products that we develop. It defines us as a company,” states the RELX purpose statement—a philosophy that continues to resonate through every innovation emerging from RELX | Reed Elsevier.

    #BUSINESS #CSR #events #Labor #latest #news #Philippines #ReedElsevier #RELX #Technology #workforce

    #business #csr #events #labor #latest #news