Maybe We Shouldn’t Normalize AI Relationships More and more people are building “relationships” with AI chatbot friends and lovers. It’s an extremely depressing sign of the times.

For Left Notes, I wrote about the depressing trend of people forming intimate relationships with AI www.left-notes.com/p/ai-chatbot...

"For those who choose to advance to meet Fate determined to mould it to their purpose that future may be as bright as our picture is dark." 💪 😎 www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1916/01...

"Opportunities are for those who seize them... the coming year may be as bright as we choose to make it." Seconding the wisdom of James Connolly's 1916 new year's greeting in the face of world war. A difficult year ahead, but we choose how we respond and what we do with it.

Left Notes’ 2024 in Review This year was less a year for the record books and more a year for the dustbin of history — at least from the point of view of left-wing politics. But we’re looking back on it anyway.

Not a lot to crow about from 2024, but I'm proud of the writing work @nickfrenchnyc.bsky.social and I did. Check out some of the highlights from our year taking notes for the left. www.left-notes.com/p/left-notes...

Left Notes’ 2024 in Review This year was less a year for the record books and more a year for the dustbin of history — at least from the point of view of left-wing politics. But we’re looking back on it anyway.

Left Notes’ 2024 roundup: @nealmeyer.bsky.social and I look back on the year www.left-notes.com/p/left-notes...

‘Living proof that you can spend money on the poor’: Utopia comes to Mexico City A visionary mayor has harnessed her imagination to promote health, wellbeing and culture in one of the Mexican capital’s most impoverished neighbourhoods

In Mexico City, the left-wing party Morena is building community centers (UTOPIAs, an acronym) in working-class neighborhoods. They're places to work out, make art, relax, & give seniors community. Would be interesting if a NYC mayor adopted this idea. 👀 www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Left Notes | Neal Meyer | Substack Writing about politics, the labor movement, and philosophy from a democratic socialist perspective. Click to read Left Notes, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

In case your New Year's resolution is to stay on top of some good writing about 1) the Democratic Party (its travails and how the left and labor movement should respond) and 2) democratic socialist philosophy, you can subscribe here. www.left-notes.com

How Sunday Morning News Shows Promote an Anti-Palestinian Agenda for Washington Since October 2023, NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, and CNN’s State of the Union have not featured a single Palestinian guest.

I (and my pseudonymous co-author) did an analysis of Sunday Morning news shows and their coverage of Gaza. We found this coverage defined by double standards, casual dehumanization of Palestinians, and softball questions to US and Israeli officials.

www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Key findings 🧵

Manchin and Sinema at it again, yet both will soon be gone. But fear not, next time there's a Democratic president some new conservative Democratic senators will miraculously step forward to make it impossible to pass a progressive agenda. It's a feature not a bug of how the Democrats operate.

I love a well created, informative, and political venn diagram.

There is some brave soul walking down 40th St in Manhattan by himself shouting "strike! strike! strike!" (At least that's what I think he's saying.) I support this.

Neoliberalism in academia—What we can learn from physiology Neoliberalism has transformed academia by centering competition. Competition for high-impact papers and grants is supposed to “optimize” science. Howe…

I made an excursion into the Humboldt vs. neoliberal university model, some (left) Alasdair MacIntyre takes on virtues in academia and ideas about what to change and how. 😉 Check out my chapter about neoliberalism in academia in this new book: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Going Back to Class The Workers’ Party of Belgium is defying the trend of leftist movements losing touch with the working class by using community organising to build a Marxist party with mass appeal.

Great, very readable introduction by @graceblakeley.bsky.social to the world of the Workers Party in Belgium. They are one of the most interesting left-wing parties in the world right now. They're building a real base in the working class. Lots to learn! tribunemag.co.uk/2024/12/goin...

Lane Kirkland (AFL-CIO president at the time) was the perfect labor bureaucrat and Cold War warrior who passively oversaw the decline of the US labor movement from 1979 to 1995. But even he could spot the giant red flags — and not the good kinds! — in the Democrats' economic strategy decades ago.

“My people are losing their fucking jobs. I’m losing members. And you’re babbling about career changes. Bullshit. We need security. We don’t need goddamn retraining.” AFL-CIO pres to Robert Reich in 1993 during the NAFTA debate. Neatly captures why Dems have been hemorrhaging workers for decades.

a cartoon of charlie brown holding a christmas tree in front of a treasure chest with the number 1 on it ALT: a cartoon of charlie brown holding a christmas tree in front of a treasure chest with the number 1 on it

Feeling like it's finally time to start playing A Charlie Brown Christmas on repeat for the next 23 days. 😎🎄

That doesn't mean there won't be conflict in DSA. Democracy is impossible without conflicts. But they can be temporary, surmountable, and not feel like existential battles between justice and injustice. We're just debating about different wagers about how to achieve our shared goals.

But that's not true in DSA. DSA does not have rival classes. Members are not divided by big differences in material interests. There's no exploitative relationship. The org *can* be much more harmonious than it currently is because we're part of an organic whole that is moving in the same direction.

In a society with exploitation and rival classes, differences and conflict are inevitable, can be quite serious, and can't just be talked through. The whole point of the socialist project is to say: "yes we want a society that is harmonious but you have to abolish classes first to get that."

One of the things that's frustrating though totally predictable about the NYT piece I took those screenshots from is that it ignores the fact that in a class divided society, some serious ideological differences cannot just be accepted as "we just see things differently."

Those are important parts of internal democracy but they need to be part of a broader vision for a healthy, vibrant, and non-factionalized political organization.

I wonder what can be done to adjust internal DSA life to get us to a more mature and sustainable place. I think we're overdue for a serious conversation about the role of ideological tendencies and temporary slates for elections.

Genuinely interesting piece from the failing NYTimes. Relevant to internal DSA political life. The desire to identify the people with "good politics" vs. the people with "bad politics" in the org is understandable but needs to be overcome. It's a mark of our political immaturity.

The Real Bernie Model Bernie will speak as a loyal party member at the Democratic convention. But that’s a break from the first 45 years of his political life, which are still a model for independent left politics.

Bernie taking some steps back to the old Bernie and the electoral model he developed in the 80s and 90s. I support it! www.left-notes.com/p/the-real-b...

Bernie Sanders: We Need More Working-Class Candidates to Challenge Both Parties Politics / Q&A / November 26, 2024 Bernie Sanders: We Need More Working-Class Candidates to Challenge Both Parties The senator says in this exclusive interview that challengers to status quo politics ...

Hell ya Bernie: "I think that what Osborn did should be looked at as a model... He took on both parties... [W]here people can run in the Dem primary and win, that’s fine. Where it is more advantageous to run as an independent... we should do that..." www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Personally I identify as a pescatarian. I'm too cool for Gallup's reductionist framing.

Rich people are much less likely to be vegetarians.

Trump’s Labor Pick Is a Break With the Past Can she deliver for the Teamsters? Plus: B-schools’ minority enrollment, and a visit with the Points Guy.

New @businessweek.bsky.social: Trump’s team has been working to reassure business advocates about his Teamsters-backed Labor pick, saying they’ll find her nomination more palatable once the choices for deputy labor secretary and other posts are revealed

Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

This Is What Democracy Looks Like? A manifestly unfair, hypocritical, atomized society is a perfect breeding ground for right-wing pathologies. Curing them means figuring out how to inject some badly needed doses of solidarity.

I wrote some reflections on the deep roots of Trumpism’s success in the US today, beyond the particular campaign failures that Democrats are now agonizing over www.left-notes.com/p/trump-rawl...

That's something the right gets. Too many Dems are still trapped in the mentality of the 2008 Obama campaign and have limited notions of organizing that reduce it to mobilizing & GOTV. There's so much more to political work than knocking doors & textbanking (those tactics have their use of course!).