Will Shetterly's Blog, page 105
May 11, 2015
Two short, useful videos showing how to deal with police harassment
I don't endorse the adjectives, but the basic approach in this seven-second video is hard to beat: Under slightly more serious circumstances, this response is solid: I have enormous sympathy for cops who are trying to protect and serve. I have very little for cops trying to meet a quota—they should be taking quotas up with their union reps. I have none for cops who're harassing people
May 10, 2015
Four problems with work requirements for Basic Income
On twitter, Morgan Warstler, a very persistent fellow, has been trying to sell me ona version of basic income that requires everyone to register for jobs and forces them to accept any legal work that's offered. He misses these points: 1. Basic Income is not welfare. If you must think of it as something other than a benefit of citizenship, think of it as insurance. No matter how rich you are,
George Orwell explains all fascists and too many pious (ie, spiritual and religious) people
“When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler,
Why rich people shouldn't argue that the US's poor are better off than most of the world
Because if that's your standard of good enough, there's no reason not to take from the rich until they live like the US's poor. But I'll add that socialists want to raise the standard of living everywhere, so the rich should never be afraid that we will make them live as poorly as they make most people live now.
May 9, 2015
May 8, 2015
Socialist Bible Verses (and relevant to Basic Income): The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
Here's the King James Version of the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard: For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the
Efficiency is not always the answer
I was spending too much time on Facebook, so I made radical use of the "unfollow" (but not the "unfriend") option. The result is I'm spending even more time on Facebook. On Twitter, I simply unfollowed everyone, including Emma. It's now just a place to share my blog posts and, maybe once or twice a day, a link to one of my obsessions, like writing or dance or basic income or democratic socialism
May 7, 2015
A link round-up for people who still think Charlie Hebdo is a racist magazine
What, more about this? Well, there are still people wrong on the internet.... And as a socialist, I find it especially sad when socialists are wrong. So, if you want to sound like you're not an Anglocentric jingoist on cartooning and racism, these are helpful: America’s Literary Elite Takes a Bold Stand Against Dead Journalists - The Daily Beast Understanding the socio-political context of
May 6, 2015
My book gets mentioned in The Walking Dead comic
Thrill of the day for me:
