for - quote - Michael Levin - what is a good story? - the question is: Why didn't that biochemical story get you to this (new) discovery? - adjacency - good models - predictive power - good story - a good model is a good language - new words frame the world in new ways, - it allows us to divide reality in different ways - and can lead us to look in places we otherwise might now - and that can lead to new observations

for - quote - constructing Cosmo local as a counter power to the current dominating power of trans-national finance - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

quote - constructing Cosmo local as a counter power to the current dominating power of trans-national finance - (see below) - The idea here is a potential ‘entanglement’ between the local and the translocal level, - which creates new levels of strength and capacity for the local. · Hence, faced with the potential hostility of nation-states that are under the influence of extractive forces of trans-national finance, - the local is no longer just the local, but - a local that is also cosmo-local, and - can mobilize counter-power. - Faced with the potential hostility of nation-states - that are under the influence of extractive forces of trans-national finance, - the local is no longer just the local, - but a local that is also cosmo-local, and - can mobilize counter-power.

// This is a very important observation Local communities by themselves don't have the capacity to stand up against trans-national power, but uniting together gives local communities this capacity and a fighting chance

• A large network of people accessing an open knowledge commons increases the local information capacity of a community,
  • compensating for the specific knowledge deficits of a community and enabling projects to co-create healthy, local,autonomous wellbeing culture and economy.

//

for - quote - power of language - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - 2023

quote - power of language - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - 2023 - (see below) - We are still performers of the dominant culture

for - quote / insight - power is being held at the 3rd person perspective, not the fifth or higher person perspective - John Churchill

quote / insight - power is being held at the 3rd person perspective, not the fifth or higher person perspective - John Churchill - (see below) - The problem is is we're not listening to the fifth person perspective physicists, - we're listening to the third person perspective physicists - and mainly because the source of power is located in our planet at third person perspective. - That's where the power band is attempting to hold control

comment - The same is true of politics

for - quote / critique - it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticize the inevitable. - Andrew Carnegie - The Gospel of Wealth - alternatives - to - mainstream companies - cooperatives - Peer to Peer - Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) - Fair Share Commons - B Corporations - Worker owned companies

quote / critique - it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticize the inevitable. - Andrew Carnegie - The Gospel of Wealth - This is a defeatist attitude that does not look for a condition where both enormous inequality AND universal squalor can both eliminated - Today, there are a growing number of alternative ideas which can challenge this claim such as: - Cooperatives - example - Mondragon corporation with 70,000 employees - B Corporations - Fair Share Commons - Peer to Peer - Worker owned companies - Cosmolocal organizations - Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)

• for: corporate power, technology - capitalism, capitalism - exploitation, Danah Boyd, progress trap
• paraphrase
• quote
  • technology in the U.S. is caught up in American late-stage (or financialized) capitalism
    • where profitability isn’t the goal;
    • perpetual return on investment is.
  • Given this, the tools that we’re seeing developed by corporations
  • reinforce capitalist agendas.
  • Innovation will require pushing past this capitalist infrastructure to achieve the social benefits and civic innovation that will work in the United States.
  • China is a whole other ball of wax.
  • If you want to go there, follow up with me. But pay attention to Taobao centers.
  • We haven’t hit peak awful yet.
  • I have every confidence that social and civic innovation can be beneficial in the long run
    • with a caveat that I think that climate change dynamics might ruin all of that
  • but no matter what, I don’t think we’re going to see significant positive change by 2030.
  • I think things are going to get much worse before they start to get better.
  • I should also note that I don’t think that many players have taken responsibility for what’s unfolding. -Yes, tech companies are starting to see that things might be a problem,
    • but that’s only on the surface. -News media does not at all acknowledge its role in amplifying discord,
    • or its financialized dynamics.
  • The major financiers of this economy don’t take any responsibility for what’s unfolding. Etc.
• author: Dana Boyd
  • principal researcher, Microsoft Research
  • founder, Data & Society

• key insight
• quote
  • if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us,
    • we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
    • think of the worst person for the job position you are hiring for
    • design the system to
      • screen that person out
      • if they do manage to get in, have oversight that can eliminate them from the post
      • have a system in place that looks upwards to the top position to scrutinize them and hold them accountable

• quote
  • power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely
• Author
  • Lord Acton
• Context
  • Lord Acton coined the term to whiitewash the brutality o Spanish Inquisition

Oh the ironies of this as he was talking about a small proportion of the population at the time, a large swath of which (namely enslaved persons with no power) had no arms to protect themselves against him.

His definition of "freemen" was painfully limiting for someone speaking about freedom in such lofty terms.