@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

AdrianRiskin

@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social

Anarchist, activist, abolitionist, angelenoLOLogist, mathematician. Formerly at https://michaelkohlhaas.org and https://sunshinecoalition.net, now at https://chez-risk.in. #Anarchism #Abolition #LosAngeles #Mathematics #Anarchy #Math #Fedi22 searchable https://justmytoots.com/@adrianriskin@kolektiva.social

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julieofthespirits, to random Spanish
@julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social avatar

The other day I watched Leave the World Behind and while the general concept of the film was fine I guess and the cast was generally talented there were all these weird Boomer Lib moments in the construction of the characters that made it really alienating to anyone who's not, you know, a boomer lib

Then I go on to Wikipedia and I see that Obama personally gave feedback to the screenwriter, telling them how to make the characters more sympathetic

One of the greatest own goals in the history of cinema

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@sidereal @julieofthespirits @inquiline @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs @kiwi i grew up in LA and lived all over the country before I finally made it back here. It's deeply, deeply fucked up, but for all that I'm not really happy anywhere else for strictly personal reasons. People definitely need to shut up about it being paradise but it's not actively worse than anywhere else I don't think.

ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs, to random
@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs@kolektiva.social avatar

It is a misunderstanding to think cats don't love us like dogs do, or that they are less social, or that they are lower maintenance and need less attention and care. Cats don't even like it when we go out of our way to greet the dog but not them. They get separation anxiety. They sleep when they are stressed or bored (relatable), so we often misunderstand these emotions in cats. Cats feeling superior, or not needing us, or not caring, makes me so sad for cats, knowing all this to be false.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs yes, yes! I used to have a cat that could recognize my footsteps on the sidewalk and when she heard me coming up the street would absolutely gallop to meet me and then walk back with me all the way up the block. There was no mistaking that kitty's love and sociability.

AdrianRiskin, to random
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

"The notion that there is a clear division between state forces and crime groups—that corruption and collaboration are the work of a few bad apples—is a hegemonic idea promoted by nation-states and the mainstream media. Undoing this binary means learning from the people whose lives have been directly affected by armed groups whose activity is carried out with impunity. Impunity is not the result of a weak or deficient state, but rather it is actively provided to the gamut of armed groups who commit crimes and acts of terror against citizens, migrants, and the poor. The provision of impunity to armed actors who are politically aligned with capitalism is part of a modern nation state’s raison d’etre."

Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley

https://search.worldcat.org/title/871789626

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

Beginning my long journey from El Monte to Santa Clarita via public transit.

It has started off well with a guy at the bus station complimenting my DIY bicycle headlight system.

"You make this? I like this. Very smart. Not easy to think so smart."

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@MLE_online @JamesAkers They're supposed to be one way but LA Metro doesn't check, so it's possible to ride out and back for 1.75 if you can do it in two hours, even the same bus in the reverse direction counts as a transfer. Not a bad deal, although of course it should be free.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@MLE_online @JamesAkers I just found out by accident bc Ralph's is only 15 minutes on the 204 from my house, so it just happened naturally.

AdrianRiskin, to LosAngeles
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

This morning at about 6:45 AM as I was leaving for work.

#LosAngeles #Raccoons #UrbanWildlife

Two raccoons on the sidewalk of a residential street in Los Angeles.

AdrianRiskin, to Oakland
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

The Riders Come Out at Night by @darwinbondgraham and Ali Winston is a highly detailed, highly local recent history of Oakland PD. It's essential reading for abolitionists. So many of the arguments against police abolition are based on abstract ideas about the police that just don't match up with real experience. So many opponents of abolition are deeply invested in theoretical and false ideas of what police do. This book is loaded with reality. It's really good -- I highly recommend it!

https://search.worldcat.org/title/1330896303

AdrianRiskin, to Bloomscrolling
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

I'm not sure what kind of mesemb this is but it sure is flowering!

HeavenlyPossum, to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

I remember being pretty young and asking my parents—is this it? We go to school every day and then we get a job and go to work every day and this is our lives, forever? Just living each day according to someone else’s schedule, at someone else’s command? This is life?

And they were pretty flummoxed. Yeah, they said, this is life. What did you expect? This is what you do and then you die.

These are the same people who showed my Koyaanisqatsi when I was like six and encouraged me to internalize its message that capitalist modernity is catastrophically, irrevocably broken and unsustainable.

And I just think…a lot of people hold pretty good beliefs in the abstract but it doesn’t occur to them to live as if they were actually true.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@HeavenlyPossum @mark This wasn't unique to Rome. American slaves were often allowed to "hire their own time," which meant they could live independently and work as they chose as long as they paid their master the price. They could keep the balance of their income.

AdrianRiskin, to LosAngeles
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

The feral parrots of LA have a strong presence in the San Gabriel Valley, but they tend to hang out in the leafier suburbs because they like the abundance of trees in those places.

Lately though they seem to be hanging out more often in my city. I don't know what they're doing here, but it's always a delight to see and hear them.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@MLE_online I see them regularly in Hollywood, South LA, and especially Whittier, where hundreds would perch in a big old sycamore in the yard when I lived there and squawk and then all take off at once. 🦜🦜🌳🦜

AdrianRiskin, to Palestine
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

Nice essay by @DavidKlion in the Nation about Jonathan Glazer's speech.

"For those of us who appreciate The Zone of Interest in the spirit Glazer in which intended it, and who share his basic perspective on Gaza, what’s additionally striking is how measured his remarks were. Glazer did not demand a free Palestine from the river to the sea, did not comment on whether Zionism is inherently racist, and did not deny the suffering of Israelis on October 7 (in fact, he cast them as victims of the occupation, just as Palestinians are). All he did was attempt to reclaim Jewish identity and Holocaust memory from their propagandistic use in the service of Israel’s military campaign, and to suggest that the lessons of the Holocaust might apply to atrocities committed by Jews and not only those committed against Jews. The ferocious response suggests that Glazer’s critics now recognize themselves in Rudolf and Hedwig Höss, and they’ll never forgive Glazer for that."

#JonathanGlazer #HitDogsHoller #Palestine #Israel #Hollywood #ZoneOfInterest #Oscars #Genocide #TheNation

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/glazer-zone-interest-backlash-letter/

urlyman, to random
@urlyman@mastodon.social avatar

@jackofalltrades just to say thank you for trying so hard in this thread https://mas.to/@jackofalltrades/112133626258185236

The number of people imputing things they wanted to hear, seemingly so they could accuse you, but which you didn’t say, and/or not investing any curiosity in what you did actually point them at… was quite something.

It kind of brings home just how much is functionally invisible

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@RD4Anarchy @Loukas @neonsnake @HeavenlyPossum @urlyman @jackofalltrades I don't presume to speak for Loukas, but their description of capital resulting from a dialectical process really resonates with me and I think I can make sense of it, at least in my own head, through an analogy and some specific examples.

Analogically I think of dog breeding as another example of a directed process without an architect. Dog breeders have a set of overlapping goals, not the same for every one of them but most of the goals are shared by many breeders. This puts each in a position to adopt the innovations of the others for what might be slightly different but still related purposes, and over hundreds or thousands of years this leads to dogs that look like they're the result of a single designer with an intention but they're not. Capitalism seems to me to evolve this way as well, although I don't think dog breeding is dialectical since dogs don't really have a say in the process.

Capitalists also share a set of overlapping goals, and tools one capitalist finds useful will be adopted and modified by others. As with dog breeding the end result of this after a few centuries is a state of affairs that looks intelligently designed but there's no single designer.

So for instance, New York real estate developers invented the modern city park in the mid 19th century. This allowed them to crush commoning in Manhattan, to force former commoners into wage labor, to hypercharge real estate values, and a whole host of other things. What a useful polyvalent tool! Thus we see capitalists all over the US in the next 50 years or so adopting and modifying this innovation to serve their related but not always identical purposes.

For me the dialectical aspect of this process arises from the fact that both capitalists and their victims have power of various kinds, but capitalists have much, much more on a daily basis. Victims can resist, forcing capitalists to adapt to resistance and fueling a dialectic process.

So for instance when modern parks were first invented they didn't necessarily have laws against grazing cattle in them, fishing in their lakes, and so on. But people resisted the semi-enclosure of their formerly common land by continuing to carry out commoning activities, forcing capitalists to pass specific laws against this, to invent park rangers, park fencing, and so on. In some cities they built housing right on the park border, which not only let the park amplify real estate values even more efficiently, but effectively created a class of "park people"* to provide political support for ever more repressive park control measures. This is dialectics!

There are plenty other much more consequential examples of this process, but this post is already too long.

  • Not my phrase but I can't remember whose phrase it is.
AdrianRiskin, to Israel
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

We are Jewish Americans who have varying perspectives. We’ve come together to highlight and oppose the unprecedented and damaging role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allied groups in US elections, especially within Democratic Party primaries. We recognize that the purpose of AIPAC’s interventions in electoral politics is to defeat any critics of Israeli government policy and to support candidates who vow unwavering loyalty to Israel, thereby ensuring the United States’ continuing support for all that Israel does, regardless of its violence and illegality.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/a-statement-from-jewish-americans-opposing-aipac/

SallyStrange, to random
@SallyStrange@eldritch.cafe avatar

Every time I get reminded of the time some boomer named Marty Fouts took it upon himself to defend capitalism, in reply to my post about how I enjoy arguing with capitalism defenders, then claimed he wasn't defending capitalism, then flounced and blocked me because he couldn't defend capitalism, I giggle.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@SallyStrange That fucking guy. "No, let me suggest that you learn basic logic while I ignore every substantial point you made." Fun times!

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

When you get a new house, You get 8 keys made, give 4 to friends/family, put one in your wallet/purse, hide one in your car, bury one with your gold, the last one goes to a stranger to see if they can solve the mystery of what it goes to.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@RolloTreadway @RickiTarr In 2017 we bought a house built in 1912, which came with a drawer full of a hundred years worth of random mystery keys, many of which looked like these. Amazingly after a little WD40 a couple of them actually worked but most of them were to long-discarded locks.

fractalkitty, to genart
@fractalkitty@mathstodon.xyz avatar

This needs tweaks, but if you want to endlessly add fibonacci numbers...

Is it endless?

What is the average score of randomly moving until you lose?

do you play better when you don't try?

I might bother to answer these, I might not.

https://sumfib.com/

It should work on mobile other than not having a delay when you hit the end. (I need to figure out how to fix that)

#mathart #creativecoding #pisano #fibonacci #sums #sequences #math #mathematics #addingGames #p5js #processing

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@fractalkitty very fun, thank you! I do much better when I try. E.g. 25,633 with two 987 tiles. It seems like favoring down and to the right is a viable strategy just like for 2048.

It doesn't have to be endless. For instance if the first two tiles are both 1s and the new tile happens to always be a 2 the game will end with a total score of only 2. I think I'm thinking about this correctly, anyway. The initial 1s combine for 2 points. The other 14 squares fill up with 2s but no further combinations are possible.

My guess would be that every game ends, but I have no idea how to prove it.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@fractalkitty If it's not too much trouble I think it'd be useful to be able to set the size of the board. I have an idea for how to prove that every game terminates and differently shaped boards would be useful for testing hypotheses. I'm pretty sure I can show already that every n x 1 game terminates, e.g. Probably it's possible to get a sharp bound on the maximum possible score at least in simple cases.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@fractalkitty Did I break it? I changed a number in the code and it started expanding the board with each move and kept it up even after I changed the number back. I'm really sorry.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@fractalkitty Ah, that works. Sorry to bother!

AdrianRiskin, to LosAngeles
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

Watch the watchers is a website set up by Stop LAPD Spying where you can look up LAPD officers by name or serial number and see their official headshots. It's incredibly useful for cop watching and other activism and it's one year old today!

https://watchthewatchers.net/

AdrianRiskin, to LosAngeles
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

An excellent article by Maylin Tu on how to use the California Public Records Act in Los Angeles. (I'm quoted!)

https://lapublicpress.org/2024/03/anyone-can-file-a-public-records-request-in-la-heres-how-to-file-yours/

HeavenlyPossum, to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

The funniest thing about Donald Trump is that he is so routinely honest in public—“I will be a dictator,” “there will be violence if I lose”—and yet the majority of people are so concerned about decorum, so terrified of appearing to overreact, that the American political system just plods along as if he hadn’t said what he said.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@jackofalltrades @HeavenlyPossum @thesquirrelfish @jlou capitalist laws against productive uses of land contributes greatly to this imbalance. E.g. as recently as a hundred years ago cities could produce all their own dairy products by using open land later enclosed as parkland specifically if not wholly to prevent this. Chickens, goats, pigs, cows, other urban livestock and market gardens, all of which capital has effectively banished from cities are surprisingly productive. Yes, cities can't feed themselves, but very few human communities can and I don't see why it should be a goal.

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@jackofalltrades @HeavenlyPossum @afterconnery @jlou @violetmadder @thesquirrelfish But cities do produce food locally, and if capitalists hadn't outlawed most forms of urban food production in order to force people into the labor market we could produce much more. E.g. before refrigerated transport every city produced all its own dairy locally by allowing cows and goats to graze on common property. There's no reason this wouldn't still work. Same with chickens, pigs, rabbits, bees, and other such small livestock.

There's also fishing. Here in Los Angeles we produce incredible amounts of seafood. It's also possible to farm fish in surprisingly small ponds if the law allows. There are or have been trout farms on city lots right in urban LA. Fruit trees and small gardens are incredibly productive. Cities may not produce sufficient food locally, but many rural areas don't either. Trade certainly doesn't depend on coercion. Why would it stop?

inquiline, (edited ) to california
@inquiline@union.place avatar

This is my shocked face:

" would need to triple the rate of emissions cuts that the state has undertaken since 2010 in order to meet its goals for 2030"

ETA, apparently the Beacon Economics research group cited here has had some uhhh problems:
https://www.highlandernews.org/86606/uc-riverside-needs-to-halt-its-business-with-beacon-economica/

(Not sure this changes the overall conclusion, but wanted to flag that, as someone brought it to my attention)

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4534747-california-not-on-track-to-meet-2030-emissions-goals-report/

AdrianRiskin,
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social avatar

@inquiline @fatsam @flowerpot "California's a Garden of Eden, A paradise to live in and see..."

The stories are so much more delightful than the facts and they have been for 150 years now...

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