102 posts tagged with Politics.
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The Lenker
I started a Substack to promote some liberal, progressive friendly views online. [more inside]
(A) Stand-up to Protect Our Vote
A fundraising drive for the Election Protection Hotline. (Not a US resident or US citizen? Hate all the major parties? No problem! You can donate!) Then, on Oct. 26th, watch 8 minutes of nerd jokes about open source software and how programming skews your brain, and none about politics.
100,000 Balloons - How the political convention balloon drops happen
For the past almost 40 years, Treb Heining has engineered the balloon drops at every Republican National Convention and most Democratic National Conventions. I photographed how he and his team inflated and then dropped 100,000 balloons on the final night of the RNC this year in Milwaukee. [more inside]
Reading Project 2025 online
I started an open, online reading of Project 2025, that major conservative manifesto and playbook aimed at a second Trump administration. [more inside]
Kraken Whispers - an interactive text adventure
A climate-fiction text adventure with dystopian themes, set in 2051. Can you survive for one week as a regular person under the rule of the York Emergency Authority? (Maybe you can do more than survive, and blow oxygen on embers of resistance.) With beautiful art by Dibujos de Pam! Play for free in your browser, desktop or mobile. [more inside]
This Is What Democracy Look Like... Somewhere
I've always been fascinated by how elections are run around the world. Democracy in the US is crumbling, but it's not always clear what the alternative could be. So I decided to start a podcast where I ask average people how democracy works in their country, and whether they understand and/or trust it. Do they feel like they are truly represented? What other groups or institutions count as part of the democratic process (e.g., the military, students, unions, etc.)? Does federalism always lead to a 'state's rights' kind of scenario? The result is the DEMOCRACY IN... PODCAST. [more inside]
You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
My book about gamification is out! You've Been Played (Bookshop.org, Goodreads) examines how points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life as tools for profit and coercion. It’s a critique of gamification, sure – but by an actual game designer, games journalist, and former neuroscientist. And it goes far beyond the usual suspects like Fitbit and Duolingo to look at the historical roots of gamification. Foucault, Lewis Mumford, Skinner, medieval indulgences, Taylorism, ARGs – this book has it all! Reviews, talks, and excerpts inside... [more inside]
Day 2
I live-blogged the first days of the Biden administration.
Student Digitalus - Critical Optimism Weblog
I research and read a great deal of texts on a consistent basis - here I share a collection of resources with thought provoking and or significant issues and news on a wide array of vital topics. Within the site are subsite-megaposts on a variety of topics. Largely posts without comment. Comments variously interspersed.
Christian Rightcast
A podcast series for people who'd like to know more about the history and composition of the amorphous "Christian Right," how it came to be, and the role it plays in America's current authoritarian inflection point. [more inside]
Asterisk of Shame
A tiny Chrome extension to add an asterisk * following the names of each of the 147 congresspeople who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election wherever they appear on the web. [more inside]
Vote With Me
Who you vote for is private but whether or not you voted is largely public record. Vote With Me tries to match your contacts against the voting records, so you can identify people you know who didn't vote last election and maybe just need a gentle push from you to make their vote concrete. [more inside]
Donald Trump Must bin-GO
A bingo card for you with 35 possible activities to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot
txt.substack
txt. [more inside]
Full Spectrum Resistance
Last year, Seven Stories Press released my book Full Spectrum Resistance, a two-volume exploration of how to build more effective movements. Right now you can get a free eBook version of both volumes (until July 5). (I’m posting bonus content on Facebook.) If you like free books about resistance, you can also download a copy of Direct Action Works: A legal handbook for civil disobedience and non-violent direct action in Canada, first released during February 2020's massive Indigenous solidarity actions.
The Unfathomable Stupidity of Rich White Men
Hi, everyone. I've written a number of pieces for DailyKos that I've been proud of and that have been well-received, but this is the first time I've posted one to Projects. It really seems to have struck a nerve with readers, and I'm both curious about whether MeFites agree with the premise -- that we are witnessing a long-overdue mass revolt against a corrupt and racist plutocracy -- and eager to see it continue to find an audience, as I genuinely feel it is generating positive energy and enthusiasm for change. Thanks!
This MP Does Not Exist
I trained a StyleGAN neural network using official photos of UK Members of Parliament, then generated a whole new load of them along with names and constituencies (using segments from real MP names and structures of actual constituency names). The results are often blandly white, male & middle-aged, and occasionally very weird.
An Illustrated Guide to the Democratic Primaries
A short comic explaining one key point about the democratic primaries.
My 19th Annual Halloween Cartoon!
Just getting this one in before the sun rises. Yet another mish-mash of miserable machinations all inspired by my unhealthy obsession with Creepy and Eerie magazines. But these are in color so you can see all the carnage without any imagination whatsoever! Happy Halloween!
Tom Clancy and the Dubious Comfort of Boomer Dads
This is a longish (~4,000 words) essay about why people still go back to Tom Clancy's books, how they're both toxic and really relevant to American life in 2019, and how Clancy wrote the purest distillation of the World of the Boomer Dads. I swear it's also a lot more fun to read than this makes it sound.
This is the worst party I've ever been to. (2020 edition)
A photographic examination of the 2020 campaigns and the people's response to Trump. [more inside]
Strikelist
Strikelist is a phone banking + GOTV tool that I built for the 2018 US elections, used by a handful of winning campaigns in Rhode Island this past fall. It's totally free, and it's exclusively for progressive candidates, focusing on local and state-level elections. [more inside]
The Brexit Twitter Project
When the Chequers Plan came out, I found myself accidentally live-parody tweeting it as an effort to stay sane. It turned out to be an interesting experiment in political satire as a writer. So I decided to try it as a more deliberate creative experiment again this time around. [more inside]
My 18th Annual Halloween cartoon
It's that time o' the year when I rasterize my hallucinations to the dark and nameless interweb for a bit of fright entertainment. WARNING: it includes (shudder) Dick Cheney which may blaspheme some browsers. Enter if you dare and have a splendid Samhain!
PacTrack: Deobfuscate & Visualize U.S. Political Funding
Political action committees (PACs) obscure which candidates they fund through layers of contributions to intermediary PACs. I built this tool to help untangle those relationship and show how money moves through webs of PACs to political candidates you might not expect. [more inside]
Male Tears: A collage comic book about thwarted privilege
A cursed relic of our revolting age, Male Tears remixes vintage comic book imagery into a verbo-visual slurry for your shame or amusement: forty pages of thwarted privilege, humiliating failure and unchecked emotions exploding into weeping and/or violence. [more inside]
Hawkins Bay Dispatch
A daily list of news and views you can use. [more inside]
Meme 45
Some quirky templates in case you need to channel your rage about the current inhabitant of the Oval Office into meme form. Starting off with one basic pose, but more to come! Suggestions welcome in comments.
Thicket.io: a tool for a post-truth world (visualize research and debates)
Thicket is a platform for rigorous thinking. Users can map out political ideas, discover relevant research, and debate policy claims with others. Thicket puts your beliefs about policy in context, connecting them to relevant academic research and to opposing arguments. Thicket is aimed at students, researchers, journalists, and everyone interested in politics and public policy. The intro video is the best place to start. [more inside]
General Intellect Unit
A podcast examining the intersection of Technology, Politics and Philosophy, from an unapologetically Socialist perspective.
PizzaGate: Truth Serum Injection
Oh, just some video madness that ensues when a couple of stoners start, you know, rappin' about Pizzagate and take it a little too far. [more inside]
My mom died because she was too poor to afford a doctor
While Congress debates a rollback of the ACA, I wrote my mom's story as a reminder that health care isn't just a line item on a budget spreadsheet.
In Their Own Words: LGBTQ Asia Responds to Taiwan’s Same-Sex Marriage Ruling
An in-depth exploration of pan-Asian responses to Taiwan's same-sex marriage ruling, interviewing 42 LGBTQ people and activists from all across Asia, published on Autostraddle! [more inside]
"Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life"
It is with the greatest pleasure that I share with you Radical Technologies, the book referred to here, and for so much of which I'm indebted to conversations that have happened here. [more inside]
Sad Birthday Trump Protest
On Wednesday, June 13th, Rise and Resist will be delivering Trump's birthday present to Trump Tower in NYC - one way plane tickets to Russia. Sign his birthday card now, and tell him why you want him out of the Presidency, and out of the country. [more inside]
Progressive Massachusetts Legislator Scorecard
I created an interface to help you learn more about your Massachusetts state senator and house rep based on their past votes and bill cosponsorships. The app uses data collected by the organization Progressive Massachusetts and was developed in cooperation with them. I'm hoping it helps MA residents assess their state reps based on their legislative records, rather than their rhetoric. [more inside]
Red Flags "Read-In"
Reading for Change! April 2nd event will be online, everywhere. [more inside]
Falsehoods-to-Bullshit
I mentioned this idea in a politics thread and decided to throw it together. This replaces "falsehood(s)" with "bullshit" on any web page. As a bonus, it replaces "false" with "full-of-shit." It makes the news a bit more readable.
Screenshot
What The $!#&@! Do They Need Now?
A point-and-click game about the recent US Travel/Muslim Bans, made as part of Indie Train Jam 2017. [more inside]
The Revolution, Brought to You by Nike
This is a (longish) short story about brand strategy and revolution, published by Fireside. Deeply informed by being nose-deep in the never-ending election/political threads since, what, July? ...Content warning for contemporary politics.
What Can I Do? A Guide to Doing, Not Despairing
A short, illustrated guide to things you can do to make the world better and take care of yourself now that Everything Is Terrible. I created it as a way to get myself out of a deep politics-related funk earlier this month.
Learning How To Scream Again: Promoting Leftism for Artists and Writers
The culmination of a lot of conversation I've had with fellow artists, designers, and writers. How do we effectively sell Leftist ideology ? How did we get here? What does a new left art look like? What should it's goals be? What's the best way to achieve them?
Town Hall Project Map
I found out about the Town Hall Project from this question on ask. The data in the spreadsheet are amazing, but it can be pretty hard to get the most relevant data out of a spreadsheet. I made a couple hacked together maps to help with that question, but then decided to actually make a real thing as a learning exercise and to hopefully help other people out. [more inside]
Fight Fire With Phire
The current political cycle is terrible! But I am terrible at not being a news and politics junkie! Since I'm not going to get a break from it, I thought I'd put together this newsletter digest so you don't have to drown in it, too.
You are personally inconvenienced by a protest action you support. How should you react?
Just a short and sweet Medium post (my first). My family was briefly stuck in the Seatac airport terminal during last weekend's protests over Trump's Muslim ban. I put together some thoughts about crowd dynamics, and what you can do to support a protest action you didn't necessarily intend to be swept up in.
The Internet's Biggest Corporate Crime Database in danger of going offline
Back when we started the KNOWMORE.ORG project in 2005, we posted about it here, Excited young pups that we were. In the time in between we educated hundreds of thousands of readers over the last decade, covered the entire Global Fortune 500 and then some, and rated each company for Worker's Rights, Environmental Concerns, Human Rights, Political Influence and Business Ethics. We created an award winning browser plug-in, helped remove Dov Charney from American Apparel, and did it all on volunteer hours and DIY fundraising before crowdsourcing existed. Sadly, pending a crowdsourcing appeal, the site is in danger of closing down this April. [more inside]
Volk Art
Twitter header images of Trump supporters [more inside]
Martian Immigration Nightmare
An online game specifically made to call out Elon Musk on his collaborationism with the Trump regime. Will you manage to board the Mars rocket, or will you be crushed by an unsympathetic bureaucracy?
Trump Regime Chrome extension
A Google Chrome extension that replaces mentions of the Trump administration with "Trump Regime," which seems more appropriate.
One hour a week for political change
I started a new site based around the idea that long-term political involvement is often an overwhelming idea. But if we promise ourselves to do something one hour a week, we could change the world. Aimed at people who are looking for ways to get started in political activism, it currently consists of links to resources about how to find your representatives, and how to contact them effectively, but this is just the start.
Over the next few weeks, I hope to build a much more interactive site that gamifies the process, allowing you to form teams, log time and contacts, and find & share new tactics for organizing. There are a ton of progressive resources out there, but getting started and making it a habit can be too daunting for a lot of folks. I hope to change that.