#dsa

"We are watching maybe the biggest example of why capitalism doesn't work and why these billionaires are actually often the least deserving people you know."

They decided to run because Seth Moulton was being a dick about trans kids in sports. As a trans person who did sports as a kid, this offended them.

He fucking understands that shit is fucked up up and we cannot act as if just voting in the midterm elections will save us.

Beth is a senior software engineer and actually knows how the internet works. You want a reliable vote against KOSA and AI fuckery? She’s it.

She signs ASL and uses a cane.

They once bought me two (2) beers in 2016.

Beth does not go in for aggressive needy donation asks. You’re not going to get spammed with emails or texts begging for votes.

Beth is a genuinely cool person and I am so goddamn tired of politics as usual.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next

Crises precipitate change. That's no reason to induce a crisis, but you'd be a fool to let a crisis go to waste. Donald Trump is the greatest crisis of our young century, and the EU looks set to squander the opportunity, to its own terrible detriment.

For more than a decade, it's been clear that the American internet was not fit for purpose. The whistleblowers Mark Klein and Edward Snowden revealed that the US had weaponized its status as the world's transoceanic fiber-optic hub to spy on the entire planet:

https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-11-26-difficult-multipolarism-eurostack-5a527c32f149

US tech giants flouted privacy laws, gleefully plundering the world's cash and data with products that they remorselessly enshittified:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce

American companies repurposed their over-the-air software update capabilities to remotely brick expensive machinery in service to geopolitical priorities:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Then Trump and his tech companies started attacking key public institutions around the world, shutting down access for senior judges who attempted to hold Trump's international authoritarian allies to account for their crimes:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/20/post-american-internet/#huawei-with-american-characteristics

If Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn't need tanks or missiles. He can just tell Microsoft and Oracle to brick the entire Danish state and all of its key firms, blocking their access to their email archives, files, databases, and other key administrative tools. If Denmark still holds out, Trump can brick all their tractors, smart speakers, and phones. If Denmark still won't give up Greenland, Trump could blackhole all Danish IP addresses for the world's majority of transoceanic fiber. At the click of a mouse, Trump could shut down the world's supply of Lego, Ozempic, and delicious, lethally strong black licorice.

Now, these latent offensive capabilities were obvious long before Trump, but the presidents who weaponized them in the pre-Trump era did so in subtle and deniable ways, or under a state of exception (e.g. in response to spectacular terrorist attacks or in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine) that let bystanders assure themselves that this wouldn't become a routine policy.

After all, America profited so much from the status quo in which America and its trading partners all pretended that US tech wouldn't be weaponized for geopolitical aims, so a US president would be a fool to shatter the illusion. And even if the president was so emotionally incontinent that he demanded the naked weaponization of America's defective, boobytrapped tech exports, the power blocs that the president relies on would stop him, because they are so marinated in the rich broth that America drained from the world using Big Tech.

This is "status quo bias" in action. No one wants to let go of the vine they're swinging from until they have a new vine firmly in their grasp – but you can't reach the next vine unless you release your death-grip on your current one. So it was that, year after year, the world allowed itself to become more dependent on America's easily weaponizable tech, making the tech both more dangerous and harder to escape.

Enter Trump (a crisis) (and crises precipitate change). Under Trump, the illusion of a safe interdependence crumbled. Every day, in new and increasingly alarming ways, Trump makes it clear that America doesn't have allies or trading partners, only adversaries and rivals. Every day, Trump proves to the world that American tech isn't merely untrustworthy – it's a live, dire, urgent danger to your state, your companies, and your people. The best time to get shut of the American internet was 15 years ago. The second best time is right fucking now.

NOW!

Zohran Mamdani's first week as mayor proves that politicians can actually do good things.

Mayor Mamdani signed 12 executive orders in just over a week — a much, much faster pace than his predecessors.

The number one goal of these orders is housing affordability. He aims to protect tenants, build housing, and slash red tape.