A Boring Dystopia

Paywall removed https://archive.is/HLI1H

Israeli content creators have racked up hundreds of thousands of views in a recent viral trend on TikTok deriding the struggles of child victims of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.

The youths film themselves posing as representatives of a fictional humanitarian organisation and call their family members and friends to ask for donations for Palestinian children. Those called usually react with rage, shouting and swearing before the callers reveal themselves in the videos uploaded to the platform as humorous pranks.

In one video, shared with the text, "We pranked my father (an extreme right-winger), that we donate money for children in Gaza", a soldier asks her father to donate to the children in Gaza because "they should also be taken care of".

Her father responds: "Let them go to hell and everyone who contributes to them." After he directs a stream of curses at the 'representative', she reveals her identity and laughs.

In another video posted last week, a young woman asks her mother to donate to "innocent children in Gaza". Her mother responds: "Innocent Gazan children? There's no such thing". She then wishes the children in Gaza "death in agony, death in bad agony, in stoning, that they will burn in hell all the people there".

Just to be clear: My main point of sharing this article is about how detached the life of rich people is.

I do not at all agree that most of them are “Not evil, just disconnected”, I am pretty sure (and know some of the privileged), who are actively evil, know exactly what they are doing and just don't give a shit.

Paywall removed: https://archive.is/RFAYF

Original thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/26637058/17015120

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/33668650

Boston's South Station plastered with subversive ads for Anduril -- a company specialized in manufacturing AI powered weaponry and surveillance systems. @aboringdystopia

video: https://peertube.wtf/w/agKxrNY1SzBx4WZVQ5sTn3

Talk about #dystopian.
#ai #surveillance #defense

In Trump's latest Truth Social post, he shares a disgusting video depicting a golden statue of himself, a sky scraper with his name on it, a superyacht on the Gaza coast, him holding hands with a female entertainer in a night club wearing a see-through gown, him & Netanyahu shirtless together sipping alcohol on the Gaza coast with a sign that says "Trump Gaza," and money raining down with kids jumping up to grab it.

All the signs of what many would call the antichrist, yet the religious-right is convinced he's their savior. He wants to turn Gaza into a Las Vegas style resort with his name plastered everywhere.

The world is starting to see how things really are in the US. Sadly, many americans still don't.

REPORTER: Would a Russian oligarch be eligible for a gold card?

TRUMP: Yeah, possibly. Hey. I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.

"Ontario governments had reduced public grants for university operating revenues from about 80 percent in 1980 to around 50 percent in 2004 and to only 38 percent in 2017. Over this period, domestic and international tuition fees and miscellaneous fees paid by students jumped from 15 percent of operating funds in 1980 to 56 percent in 2017, to become the largest source of operating funds."
...
"Long before Ford, Ontario universities have pursued other avenues of privatization, particularly in ancillary services (internet technology, catering services, food courts, residences, conference venues, parking, merchandise, etc.). These turned many campuses into glorified platforms for landlordism, for contracting out, and for monopolistic forms of profit extraction. The current direction in privatization is to cut even more deeply into core education functions."
...
"The next phase of the Ford government university policy was dominated by the Laurentian University–Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act debacle, which revealed not only the government’s gross negligence in financial oversight but also a range of their anti-democratic education politics."
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"The Laurentian–CCAA process obtained for its supporters an unprecedented, radical downsizing and extraordinary corporate centralization of a public university—now sometimes called “the Laurentian model.”
...
"Then, after the program closures and mass terminations were executed, the Ford conservatives moved in to reduce and replace Laurentian’s Board of Governors in their own narrowly corporatist image so as to ensure their ideology of downsized provision, top-down management, and “market-aligned” education would be carried through and maintained long term."
...
"By supporting the CCAA process, the Ford government enabled the Laurentian board to:
• break collective agreements and slash over 200 faculty and staff positions.

• eliminate seventy-six academic programs directly affecting over 932 students, mainly but not only in arts and basic sciences.

• destroy Huntington University, Thorneloe University, and the Université de Sudbury, three small federated universities that provided mostly arts programs and had been founding partners with Laurentian.

• cut the second oldest Indigenous studies program in Canada without any consultation with Indigenous communities

• cut a disproportionate number of programs vital to the Franco-Ontarian community, including the well-enrolled sage-femme / midwifery program

• wipe out individual and institutional donations to Laurentian for teaching and research

• end or disrupt research activities, including research with community and third-party obligations

• close important cultural and sports activities with destructive community effects

• and inflict massive reputational damage on the institution, including internationally.
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"It needs to be emphasized that the entire CCAA process was unnecessary, enormously costly, and could have been ended by the Ford government, which has instead supported it through to the present day."
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"Advocates for public university education face in the Ford government both deepened crisis conditions and a hardened neoliberal drive that seeks to reduce public funding while furthering privatization and corporatization. This is consistent with capitalist accumulation—not “stabilization”—including class streaming and forcing the costs of education onto working people"