Tuesday 29 August 2023

 

"Liquid reality" is drone delievered

Progressive social thinker Zygmunt Bauman coined the valuable phrase "liquid reality” to describe the mobile  anonymity of much in today’s commercialized societies that was once considered definingly personal. If there was ever any honour in military death drone warfare signals its final disposal, Just as coin payment is now routinely ridiculed armed combat becomes old-fashoned and primitive when you can kill remotely. As cash payment requiring physical exchage is outlawed major social processes become more and more impersoonal. If death and money become more abstract social values become even more important for us to safeguard and practice.       


# posted by Taodhg @ 10:10 am 0 comments

Wednesday 23 August 2023

 

Eric La Fleche - who is he and why is he smiling?


It's Eric Richer [this is not a joke - it's his middle name] LaFleche, meaning arrow in French [also not a joke] who is CEO of Metro Supermarket chain.For not doing very much he was paid $215.000 in 2022, according to the Financial Post. It's a lot more than striking Metro workers, many on minimum wage, are asking for. The Financial Post has named him oustanding CEO of the year because his geocery chain last year raised $16 billion in revenue.. 


  


# posted by Taodhg @ 12:15 pm 0 comments

Saturday 19 August 2023

 

"Dayte Miru Shans" - Russian for give peace a better chance



 Give Peace A Chance
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# posted by Taodhg @ 9:37 am 0 comments

Monday 7 August 2023

 

Social Media billionaires challenge business and the state









The 2023 Bloomberg Billionaires Index - bloomberg.com/billionaires - lists Elon Musk of Twitter with $232B as number one, Jeff Bezos, Amazon at $164B, 3rd, while Mark Zuckerberg of "meta" at $113B  limps along in 9th place as "meta" currently snipes at the temerity of the Canadian government's legal efforts to control the corporation. At the same time Donald Trump thumbs his nose at the US government's legal assults on his right to act as his wealth and status prompt him to, that is, to be Donald Trump. With Uber changing transportation behaviour and Shein, from China, revolutionizing the fashion industry, social media, the motive agents of all these phenomena are as significant in our day as the printing press that eventually toppled feudal regimes, starting in renaissance times. Such actors can be seen as "anarchists without a cause", or no cause more elevated than the "dominate!" that was Mark Zuckeberg's creed as a young entrepreneur growing up in White Plains, New York. If AI (Artificial Intelligence) is the engineering mechanism of our times social media are the mass communications agents. Together Twitter "meta", instagram and the myriad like are shaping the world that we inhabit or, more accurately now, that, in a Copernicus like reversal, inhabit us.           
       
However ethically meagre and pedestrian the imaginations of the non-state social media agents involved, that teenagers and cartoon applications like Tik Tok can dominate the attention, and increasingly the energies, of states, is a central reality of the 2st century. This struggle is a mismatch. States, "handicapped" by societal responsibilities, cannot match the speed and  immediacy of unaccountable social media based entreprise. Framed as a challenge to democracy, which they are, social media require a response worthy of the challenge and the only option of those motivated for the struggle is the spontaneous collabaoration of progressive, social media based enterprise. Such coalitions have begun to emerge. It is the special challenge of TorontotheBetter and like motivated actors to merge visions and energies to ensure the genuinely radical potential of social media is realized in the face of its many trivializing and adolescently impregnated, but enormously wealthy, emanations of our still early second millennium.              


# posted by Taodhg @ 9:01 am 0 comments

Friday 4 August 2023

 

Who needs meta anyway?

Instead of a problem -  it has been called a threat to democracy  itself - meta’s retaliation to Canada’s new law requiring compensation for Canadian content is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to abandon rich unaccountable corporations dedicated to only one thing: profit. Looking for alternatives? Contact postmaster@TorontotheBetter.net for suggestions on topics of your choice. Meta has taken on the Canadian  state. If the state cannot do more let the people decide. Start by abandoning meta. What will $114 billion get you (Zuckerberg’s wealth according to Bloomberg.com)? Not much if people sign out of meta and it’s net worth starts to collapse. 


# posted by Taodhg @ 4:04 pm 0 comments

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