The Streisand effect
refers to the phenomenon where attempts to hide or censor information inadvertently led to greater public awareness of that information.
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Last edited Fri Dec 26, 2025, 11:28 PM - Edit history (3)
But in some ways I have mixed feelings about too much glorification of net based democritization.
Nothing to do with transparency or censorship. I don’t mean info the public has every right to know. But I can see now that tabloidization by Facebook/TikTok/YouTube/old Twitter/Newer NaziTwitter is built into the model of these creepy hyper libertarian companies that have destroyed public broadcasting/the public sector/ education/ publicly funded science etc to have Sesame Street be replaced by Mr Blippi.
A lot of stuff that should have been in the annals of some decent and honest system and handled by experts with no ties to national defense or for profit corporations instead
spill out on the web thanks to the predators at Google/Facebook/anything Musk/Palantir etc and that is not good.
It’s objectionable as it’s part of the same process of theft and also part of The Spectacle (thanks to the awesome Yasha Levine I have a smattering of an education). And it can be controlled and timed and predicted. Which is why I am going offline. Not a bloody pawn.
DU is cool. It is a legit lefty underground.I would assume that there are some spooks here (Hi guys 
..not a call-out) as there are spooks all over the net.. Hamilton Nolan wrote in Current Affairs about some similarities between activists and intelligence communities.
It clicked for me then why I hated my former employer so much. It was a sleazy data mining and defense contracting giant and I think they would have hoped that if people like me didn’t kill themselves we’d find a nice gate-kept fraudulent, defanged and toothless “tech critic” not the awesomely rabble rousing Yasha. And he is not a Russian troll etc.
But there’s underground like the animal activists in Barn 8 (who aren’t effective altruists but normal rabble like Christopher Ketcham or Nandita Bajaj etc..my people basically). And underground like spook and the two are totally antagonistic.
Edit: one of the most disturbing features of the last 15 years is the parasitic encroachment of corporatists/war-mongering spooks into medicine, journalism (e.g. Operation Mockingbird) and science and of effective altruists into animal rights etc. The goal seems to be total capture of reality by the most unscrupulous, predatory pests anywhere. This Trump-nazi era isn’t the best time to take all of it on, but I at least will be pushing back and filing complaints about every last bit of it. It is a horrifying assault on democracyand all its institutions and women’s rights and civil rights. I am reading a book by Sam Miller MacDonald-his lens is unsparing and I like it. It eschews the normal divide and rule form of pillage and plunder by indicting pretty much every cultish rapacious worldview - theocratic or other. So you can’t get away with whataboutism based on the index anyway.
But it is humanist wrt the humans and animals suffering this assault. These books are gems: Sam Miller’s and Adam Becker’s. They help reverse a 15 year program of brainwashing that didn’t take ever, but makes one miserable. It is not a narrow lens like a lot of the older left, but unsparing in its scope and its recognition of the planet as something other than a backdrop for human drama.
While I agreed with their positions more on some things, I was never that into that very narrow older left of Chomsky/Arundhati Roy/Naomi Klein etc. For one thing they always seemed very limited and they seemed rather out of date. The same handful of arguments and narratives that only interest those who already agree with you. Wasn’t very dynamic.
To keep up with this accelerating nuisance as populations explode and this same diseased narrative of the others takes new idiots forms that Becker etc ream..
The Nation for example never surprises me. I already know how they sound. Whereas Current Affairs or Levine-Kovda/Ketcham/Bajaj/Miller/Zitron -they are kinda dynamic. After all the creeps keep changing and getting more ghastly and creepy. You can’t hit back at such peopel without racing along with them but on the left. Well anyway…that’s not my job ;-/. I will go use my brain for its intended use whether it leads to gainful employment in this creep hellscape or not, it’s good for me. Science is the one part of this whole project I like..but civilian and publicly funded like my main lab or my friends. Not with these parasitic Google and Facebook creeps etc in the mix or other similar creeps.
The human brain is not meant to be colonized by some complete morons exploiting the trust honest scientists and doctors earned. This infantile hack like rot -“here’s an image” what’s the reaction? This is contemptuous of humans and parasitic. It is simple. Our politics are broken and grabbing some lefty who had found one of the least corrupt professions (publicly funded civilian science) consistent with one’s own use of modern convenience to give back with least harm - publicly funded science. To be co-opted into this disgraceful garbage in two countries and for this long. This won’t end well. Next time these creeps should avoid feminists Greens with “radical” left leanings. I am more furious than I can say. Some of it was comical, but only if you are lefty rabble of my type or at least decent. The nightmare of trying to think like some people one has no sympathy with like my last employer. None of the people I knew before were Che Guevara. They were even sometimes conservative relative to me, but they were not actively making the world a worse place and justifying every damn acceleration. They are honest people. You have to balance being a decent human with the reality of the constraints imposed by existence and do what you can. But to actively boost this noxious neoliberal project beyond all sense and reason and justify that and with each right shift call anything to the left of that radical. My malaise was not mental. It was political. It is one thing to go along lamely and hopelessly with the collective decisions of our idiot leader and influencers. It’s another to actively be expected to “this is wonderful!!! I want to be a part of this ghastly new abomination without any questions because I totally trust these random shady, shifty types about whom all I know is they are this fucking brainwashed that no excess by the national security state or corporations is too much before they go “yeah you know, I am a douchey neoliberal. But this is too much even for a douche like me”. I mean good god.
When this first happened, I was flummoxed. I could roleplay generic left of centre under normal circs. Not at this level.
And I was desperate for a left I could understand among public figures. Ie people who are not heartless or clueless. I knew that my sleazy former employer would find some nut on social media who goes “death to America!” And say that that’s my worldview. Whereas it was just that whether it is humane considerations or logical ones, it’s one thing to suffer this bs. It’s another to be enthusiastic or almost worse behave as if there is no damn alternative. I tried to leave immediately because unless you are a damn child it doesn’t need explanation. Acceleration of these same disgusting technologies and encroaching and parasitic rot taken to its disgusting logical conclusion but everyone must.
But civility ..that’s the sad part. Profanity constantly escaping as you try to be civil and not go “omfg what is wrong with these people?” And it’s not lurid.. it’s the neoliberal nightmare taken to its logical conclusion and with all normal things-yeah you need to prevent violence and terror. I don’t have an “extremist” view in the sense of idiotic positions that would fuck me over too. But the point is those things exist for specific reasons and if you expand them as clearly peopel would you should at least have the sense to know which people to not go and annoy. I can’t think of a person in my network of trust-colleagues, physicians or close friends who would be okay with it. But I can think of lamer acquaintance types who if it is fed spoonful wise will “oh well that’s just how it is without ever asking..hey why is it like that?” I even was willing to be all “oh yeah. I buy into this idiotic project” over arguments with some awful and boring people who will represent one as some sort of lunatic.
And a constant theocratic and Nazi and fascist menace or just undirected chaotic creepiness which means one has to “these are the good guys”.
Yeah well.. that didn’t end well. I am a complainant and if you are not so myopic that this economic or political cycle is all that exists, losing anonymity just makes it worse. I don’t want my actual identity ever associate with this trash. Misses the entire point.
Unfuckingbelievable. I was out of it for 14.5 years. I totally owe this lefty rabble and you guys here on du.
Unfuckingbelievable/ and there was no emergency ongoing like now. Or the pandemic. And I am not giving any quarter to these nazis now. They are a joke to ignore.
The reality is that the national security establishment is not left or right. I had a brush with them and I don’t like them. I am myself a military brat. I have no use for violence or terrorism. But I do think access etc are given for specific reasons not to hog things and force your own agenda or make money.
Yasha is honest. He can’t be bought off by anyone left or right. And he doesn’t suffer fools. I am weary of a world with few people like that. I was a publicly funded scientist and I recognize to sane extents prevention of terror etc. Not taking over all of reality via corporations and the security state.
I myself am polite if I can be, but it’s skin deep. Dislike petty conflict. That’s all..
I don’t even know Yasha or his wife Evgenia, but they remind me of scientists in being fairly uncompromising about the truth. But they are also not daft about truth. They wouldn’t be “truthful” in ways that destroy all of society like a bot.
Besides anyone can make mistakes so humility is essential and yet complicated in a world filled with so many sleazebags and morons that one can buy into one’s own bs. To not be like our disgusting elites (neoliberal or nazi) or like crazy MAGA etc is hardly a high bar.
Every time I go back to science I am reminded of the fact that I am an idiot anew. But it helps to kick out drivel with “No. Fuck off”.
I was listening to Starfucker Love earlier today and its lead singer Pat Briggs said in an interview that he was so full of his own bs when he was young. I am constantly failing at balancing awareness of one’s own bs* with anger at info about a world this fucking awful. Personal being political blah blah..
Sometimes one’s internal checks get confused by a world so out of whack. I should go work..for society or some such thing.
*: full disclosure: I’d rather give up and be high and watch tv because I hate everything, but I shouldn’t .
Edit: Besides my creepy former employer took out a core function of mine that’s not a ridiculous joke - solidarity. I never had a me vs the universe worldview till that place -you just can’t with those people. I tried. Not worth it anyway.
I like to be solitary, but that’s different. I have solidarity with my main lab and the real community broadly though I avoid them as there is nothing science related these days and besides it’s nazi time.
Community as in people like me or you guys here whom I do consider a community though loosely knit. I feel like that about my delivery men or my doctors or the few small businesses I like to support. We are all humans navigating this hideous hellscape. (Gotta be clear since I don’t plan to be nice to some creeps. Bad idea to go and mess with someone just because you despise them.)
But it is not the disgusting manufactured hearts and likes of those cynical jerks. Or being scammed by a series of creepy third parties and an altogether disgracefully extractive and parasitic operation.
I had to build that back. I was and am genuinely fond of my main lab.
Now it's the "Chump-BS No-News Broadcasting"
