Truly we share an Earth with other, non-human People....
https://defector.com/innovation-strikes-in-the-field-of-chimpanzee-rectum-adornment
#personhood
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Only seen snippets of reviews so far.
And some photos.
You're going to take this the wrong, wrong way I'm guessing.
But I've got a really bad feeling about this book.
Not oversharing, not too honest, more "spot on target" to a central delicate issue or two.
Maybe something that hasn't really been "solved".
Had my talk on Small Web accepted at #why2025 but I hadn’t realised (my bad) that not only do you have to cover your own travel and accommodation but you also have to buy a ticket to speak. I’m sorry, as part of a tiny two-person not-for-profit working for the common good, I can’t afford to pay to speak at events. I’m not Deloitte. So I sadly had to withdraw my talk.
If any conferences do want to hear about the Small Web and are willing to support our work by paying us to speak about it, please feel free to get in touch:
small-tech.orgSmall Technology Foundation: Contact UsWe’re available for speaking engagements, media interviews about our work, and to chat to VPS hosts about working together.
Great Apes should have rights, they're people like us.
Capitalism will kill all other forms of intelligence on this planet, and not even out of fear or anything, just for profit.
Sky · Famous chimpanzee sanctuary faces existential threat from illegal land grab
AI isn’t an existential threat to humanity, capitalism and corporations are.
You see, we created capitalism, a religion modeled on cancer, and the corporation, a new, artificial species; a parasite that co-opts human beings to do its bidding; an organism that’s psychopathic by design and grows by extracting from and exploiting us and our habitat.
And we now find ourselves ruled by this religion and driven to ruin by these parasites as they drain our humanity, destroy our habitat, and condemn our future.
Your enemy is capitalism.
Your enemy is the corporation.
This is an existential battle against a cancerous ideology and an invasive species for the survival of our own.
"Kanzi has died at the age of 44. The iconic bonobo reshaped our understanding of ape intelligence, challenging long-held beliefs about what separates humans from our closest living relatives.
(. . .)
Koko the gorilla and Washoe the chimp communicated via sign language, but Kanzi took communication to a new level, demonstrating a profound capacity to communicate via symbols and comprehend verbal English.
(. . .)
Famously, Kanzi was also a gamer. I first learned of Kanzi in 2006 when I spotted a bootlegged NHK Youtube video showing a bonobo playing Pac-Man with both proficiency and delight. I corresponded with Savage-Rumbaugh about the video, and she told me: 'This film is so compelling and there is so much of it (over 300 hours) in so many different natural circumstances, that any thought that these clips represent anything other than their real competencies, become unreasonable.'"
https://gizmodo.com/rip-kanzi-the-bonobo-who-mastered-language-and-minecraft-20005790
Gizmodo · RIP Kanzi, the Bonobo Who Mastered Language and MinecraftThe famous ape reportedly knew thousands of words, loved Clint Eastwood movies, and was a big fan of video games.
Replied to Aral Balkan
@aral what a great piece. I really like your linking of the climate, democracy and personhood emergency. I am just sad I didn’t see this earlier, it would have been perfect for a #Personhood module I wrote and taught 2022-24. I agree, personhood is really important! Now sadly i have been made redundant i can’t teach anymore; nevertheless, good to read even now 
I wrote this five years ago:
“Democracy or capitalism? Pick one.
If, like me, you grew up in the 80s, you probably unthinkingly accepted the neoliberal maxim that democracy and capitalism go hand-in-hand. This is one of the greatest lies ever told. Democracy and capitalism are polar opposites.
You cannot have a functional democracy and billionaires and trillion-dollar corporate interests and Silicon Valley’s Big Tech misinformation and exploitation machinery. What we’re seeing is the clash of capitalism and democracy and capitalism is winning.
Are we past a tipping point? I don’t know. Perhaps. But we can’t think like that.
Personally, I’m going to keep working to effect change where I feel I can be effective: in creating alternative technological infrastructure to support individual freedoms and democracy.
We’ve already laid the infrastructure of techno-fascism. We’ve already created (and are creating) the panopticons. All the fascists need to do is move in and take the controls. And they will do so democratically, before destroying democracy, just as Hitler did.
And if you think the 1930s and 40s were something, remember that the most advanced tools to amplify the destructive ideologies of the time were less powerful than the computers you have in your pockets today. Today we have machine learning and are on the brink of unlocking quantum computing.
We must ensure the 2030s are not like the 1930s. Because our advanced centralised systems of data capture, classification, and prediction plus a hundred years of exponential increase in processing power (note: I do not use the word “progress”) mean the 2030s will be exponentially worse.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, we have a common enemy: the nationalist international. The problems of our time transcend national borders. The solutions must also. The systems we build must be both local and global at once. The network we must build is one of solidarity.
We created the present. We will create the future. Let’s work together to ensure that that future is the one we want to live in ourselves.”
– In 2020 and beyond, the battle to save personhood and democracy requires a radical overhaul of mainstream technology
And that’s why I’m working on building the Small Web.
https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/
With ZERO funding from the EU and multiple rejections from NLNet/ngi (because they still don’t get it).
https://ar.al/2022/10/20/nlnet-grant-application-for-domain-rejected/
(That’s from 2022. We were also rejected in 2024 for my work on Kitten, Domain, and Place as outlined in my talk, linked below, but I was too tired to write about it again.)
https://ar.al/2024/06/24/small-web-computer-science-colloquium-at-university-of-groningen/
So for fuck’s sake, if you agree with my vision for a technological (and thus societal) future different from the hellscape we currently inhabit, and want to help us explore one possible path towards it, please fund our damn work. (Because, clearly, the EU is adamant about not doing so.)
https://small-tech.org/fund-us/
Other ways to help:
- If you know of folks that are ethically compatible who offer no strings funding, please try to secure some for us (my time is 100% spent on coding at the moment).
- If you know of conferences that pay their speakers, ask them to have me speak on the Small Web. It can be as technical or non-technical as you like and I won’t do it for free but I’m happy to accept, within reason, what they can afford (in addition to travel and accommodation being covered) and any fees received go to Small Technology Foundation, our not-for-profit.
- Help share this far and wide.
Once Domain is released and we have the first Small Web host running on small-web.org – hopefully the first of many that will be run by other folks in the future – and we start taking commercial sign-ups for Small Web places, we should eventually have the money problem solved (because apparently that’s a problem you have to solve to gain the privilege of working for the common good in our world because our system is unabashedly shortsighted).
So, yeah, anyway, g’morning! How’s your day going so far? :)
(You made it this far? You deserve a hug. And don’t worry, I’m just venting. Things will get better. It’s just frustrating swimming upstream all the time.)
Aral Balkan · In 2020 and beyond, the battle to save personhood and democracy requires a radical overhaul of mainstream technologyWe stand at the precipice of reverting from being people to being property again, hacked via a digital and networked backdoor, the existence of which we continue to deny at our peril.
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does any entity here has a ready summary that explains (from "our" perspective) for the following:
- not all human-shaped creatures identify as "people" or "persons"
- relationship between (personhood) vs. (plurality and therarians/otherkin identities)
- how diagnoses like depersonalisation and DID can affect the above
I spoke recently with Caroline Risberg and Seth Camillo for their “The Internet is Crack” podcast. This is the recording.
We cover a bunch of stuff including the fediverse and the Small Web and I share quite a few anecdotes.
Maybe more relevant than ever… we need constitutional protection of human rights in the digital network age.
It’s simply about acknowledging that what constitutes the borders of the self have changed and that our application of human rights law must adapt accordingly to protect the whole self and thus personhood.
cyborgrights.euThe Universal Declaration of Cyborg Rights
I certainly fear with this news coming out of the UK that #encryption as a whole is going to be on the chopping block worldwide in the very near future, especially with the current political climate.
Enjoy it while you still can...
Ars Technica · UK demands Apple break encryption to allow gov’t spying worldwide, reports say
If Apple complies with this, the UK government will gain access to all iCloud data globally. The only way Apple comes out of this with any integrity is to leave the UK market. If they give in to this, every regime in the world will demand the same thing. And that’s before we even get to the fact that there’s no such thing as a “backdoor” for just so-and-so. Either there is a door or there isn’t and if there is, anyone who obtains the key can use it.
The Guardian · UK demands ability to access Apple users’ encrypted data
[Thread] What to do with all those #Biosolids? (And why are they full of #PFAS in the first place, I wonder.) Talk of building a Biosolid to Energy plant in #BrunswickMaine but the leftover ick will be dumped at #JuniperRidge -- where it can leech into the #PenobscotRiver where the #PenobscotNation live and fish! (And talk about treating #SacredPlaces the way they should be -- the Penobscot River is one of those places that should be granted #Personhood)!
Love mountains but gotta wrap my head around this concept
#Taranaki #Personhood #Maori #Sacred #NewZealand #IndigenousRights #Environment #CulturalHeritage
A New Zealand mountain is gran...
Bluesky SocialBluesky
As bizarre as it may look at first sight to my western eyes, on second thought it actually makes perfect sense.
|A New Zealand #mountain is granted #personhood, recognizing it as #sacred for #Māori | The Independent
The Independent · A New Zealand mountain is granted personhood, recognizing it as sacred for Māori
#Taranaki becomes the third #naturalfeature in #Aotearoa aka New Zealand to be granted legal #personhood following #TeUrewera in 2014 and the #Whanganui River in 2017. That designation means the geographic features gain the legal status of a person, ensuring they are treated with respect and protection.
“When we think about the concept of personhood, what we are doing is putting in place a very #Māori! #Indigenous concept into western law,” Jamie Tuuta
The Guardian · Taranaki Mounga: New Zealand mountain granted same legal rights as a person
On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that five wild-born zoo elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo do not have a right to liberty.
The lawsuit, filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), sought a writ of habeas corpus for the five animals, which would have allowed the NhRP to fight for their release and send them to a sanctuary.
However, the court ruled that 'no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated [elephants] may be,' habeas corpus only applies to people.
The concept of personhood actually sounds more outlandish than it is, especially when corporations technically have personhood—so, why not sentient four-legged creatures?
This case involved Jambo, Kimba, LouLou, Lucky, and Missy, five elephants in their 40s and 50s held at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, where the NhRP has argued they have inadequate enrichment and only room to walk less than 100 yards in any direction."
https://www.newsweek.com/elephants-are-sentient-why-wont-courts-say-theyre-people-opinion-2019169
Newsweek · Elephants Are Sentient. Why Won't Courts Admit They're People? | OpinionOn Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that five wild-born zoo elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo do not have a right to liberty.
Replied in thread
/2 Fetal personhood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_human_personhood
* opinion: moment wh. human 1st recognized as person
* issue arises in science, religion, philosophy, law
* acutely in debates re: abortion/stem cells/{reproductive |fetal} rights
#abortion #personhood #LegalPersonhood
#USpol #USlaw #FetalPersonhood #pseudoscience
#GOP #Trump2 #fascism #Project2025
#ChristianRight #Catholicism #paternalism #sexism #misogyny
#Christofascism #transgenocide
#WomensRights #abortion #ReproductiveRights #SelfDetermination
en.wikipedia.orgBeginning of human personhood - Wikipedia
By describing a fetus as a person from conception, Trump has legitimized #fetal #personhood.
Pro-abortion activists have long warned that fetal personhood,
an ideology that calls for providing equal human rights to a fetus
(even if it’s a cluster of cells),
will effectively strip pregnant people of their own rights.
The legal language employed by fetal personhood also effectively categorizes any person receiving an abortion at any stage as a #murderer.
But the concept of fetal personhood is not only weaponized to limit abortion access
—it’s also been leveraged at the state level to restrict in vitro fertilization ( #IVF ) access for intended parents in places such as Alabama,
and even used to limit access to forms of #birth #control.
In May, the Texas GOP attempted to transform fetal personhood into law, claiming that “abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide,”
and called on lawmakers to extend “equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization"
https://newrepublic.com/post/190506/donald-trump-fetal-personhood-executive-order
The New Republic · Trump Sneaks Dangerous Rights for Fetuses Into Executive OrderDonald Trump slipped the anti-abortion language into an otherwise unrelated order.