I had some stickers made, and have some extras free for the asking to anyone in Canada or at cosocial.ca. Just give me a postal address and I'll pop one in the mail.

https://www.miskatonic.org/2025/03/30/ludd/

people are banging on endlessly about the #luddites but i dont see much emphasis on the mass character of their movement

it was a class-based social movement built from below which used direct action to achieve its goals. they struggled for reforms and defended the use of violence

#luddism is less about individual life choices and more about joining and organising in social movements to create a real social force to transform society

if #luddism is so cool then why is joining your local grassroots workplace/tenant union, solidarity network or neighbourhood mutual aid group so uncommon?

engaging (in whatever way you can) in concrete political practice is crucial if we want the legacy of #luddism to mean more than the romantic idea of hitting something with a large hammer

Today in Labor History March 11, 1811: Luddites attacked looms near Nottingham, England, because automation was threatening their jobs. At the time, workers were suffering from high unemployment, declining wages, an “endless” war with France and food scarcity. On March 11, they smashed machines in Nottingham and demonstrated for job security and higher wages. The protests and property destruction spread across a 70-mile area of England, reaching Manchester. The government sent troops to protect the factories and made machine-breaking punishable by death.

@GreenFire @TheJen

& the "This Will Solve Everything" impulse is strong enough that it's hard to motivate the makers (or anybody except cartoonists & comedians) to game out possible negative consequences.

Listen to the #Luddites

Credit: University of Kent archive
https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=WH0933&pos=124

A Luddite is a person who wants technology to benefit the lower echelons of society (workers, low wage-earners, etc), instead of those at the top (bosses, millionaires, corporations).

And who is willing to take action to stop those top dogs from using technology to trample those at the bottom.

Be a Luddite.

"The original Luddites did not hate technology. Most were skilled machine operators. ...what they objected to were the specific ways that tech was being used to undermine their status, upend their communities and destroy their livelihoods. So they took sledgehammers to the mechanized looms used to exploit them."

We should emulate them.

Gift link: https://wapo.st/44VuZBY

@mmlvx @mensrea @jakob @stefanieschulte @Doreen32128 @mekkaokereke @mxtthxw @22 and some of the complaints the #Luddites had were about quality. The machines replacing them made inferior goods. It was about, to use @pluralistic ‘s term, #enshittification in addition to a #LaborMovement