#socialism

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The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, surveying the data on contemporary hunter-gatherers, exploded the Hobbesian myth in an article entitled "The Original Affluent Society." They work a lot less than we do, and their work is hard to distinguish from what we regard as play. Sahlins concluded that "hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society." They worked an average of four hours a day, assuming they were "working" at all. Their "labor," as it appears to us, was skilled labor which exercised their physical and intellectual capacities...
-David Graeber

I'm with Von Ronk!

Van Ronk, for those unfamiliar with him, was an important figure in the New York folk revival of the 1960s. He was also a big fan of scifi, and politically active in the IWW, the anarchist Libertarian League, the Young Socialist League, and Trotskyist groups.

During his Stonewall arrest, police beat him nearly unconscious.

natalieironside writes: Fun history facts: One of the 31 people arrested at Stonewall on June 28th 1969 was American folk singer Dave Van Ronk, who was not at the Stonewall Inn at the time and was cis & straight as far as I'm aware. He'd been eating dinner at a nearby restaurant when he noticed a riot happening, said "Well | suppose | should go see what the fuss is about," stepped outside, and immediately started throwing bricks at the cops. kbaycolt adds: van ronk is quoted as saying about the riots: "as far as | was concerned, anybody who'd stand against the cops was all right with me."

In 1998, the founders of Google famously wrote that any search engine powered by advertising revenues would be “inherently biased” and contrary to the interests of the user. Twenty-seven years and ~$1.9 trillion dollars in advertising revenue later...

https://www.northsouthnotes.org/p/nostalgia-for-2021

"Nicaragua is first in the world (64.3%) in share of women Cabinet members—those serving as heads of ministries—as of January 2025, and ranks third in the world for its share of women parliamentarians (55%)."

"Figures on the most recent data on women in executive positions and national parliaments was presented in the “Women in Politics: 2025” Map, prepared by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women."

https://kawsachun.com/nicaragua-1-in-the-world-for-women-in-top-government-roles/