Unplugging from the Matrix - The Lagrange Point Vol. II, Iss. 3

Welcome to issue #3 of Volume 2 of The Lagrange Point!

I'm sorry for the extra-long hiatus there! I went a week over what I had initially promised, but the truth is I needed the extra time as I've been dealing with a lot of random busy work.

Firing the newsletter back up after that break feels a bit like getting a locomotive back up to speed, but once it gets moving momentum will keep it on track.

That said, it's just the two sections this week, as I still need to clear the cobwebs from my brain and find more time to write again. I'll have more to say in weeks to come!

In This Issue

News You Can Use

• Danielle Smith's trip to Washington, or, the Bonfire of the UCP

Rantables

• Unplugging from the Matrix — TikTok's drama highlights the tech broligarchy seizing control of our lives

I'm coming back into the swing of things after some pretty wild weeks. It's tempting to go back and dredge up coverage of the final days of Trudeau and everything that surrounded that, but I'm going to stick to my guns and bring you the highlights of the week. With that...

I appreciated this CBC piece from Marina von Stackelberg which brings back down to earth the people trying to flesh out Trudeau's legacy with his much-touted dental and pharmacare plans. The fed NDP is also loudly trumpeting these plans as proof of their progressive bona fides. Here's the problem, as von Stackelberg shows: neither plan has been very successful, or really even implemented. Now, you might well argue that progress takes time, but we're at a point where the continuation of the plans is in doubt.

Speaking of doubt, I don't think Alberta is super happy with their premier right now. Danielle Smith has been making headlines for refusing to add her name to a unity pledge in the face of Trump's threats towards Canada that every other first minister, including and notably Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau, side by side, signed. Instead, she embarked on an ass-kissing tour to Mar-a-Lago and planned to be at Trump's inauguration. Hilariously, the CBC found out she won't actually be there, as the inauguration moved indoors and cut her out of the guest list. Brilliant move, Smith.

Staying with Smith, The Breakdown in Alberta has revealed through Freedom-of-Information requests that the UCP government has been funding alt-right faux news organization "the Countersignal." Run by notorious shitstain Keean Bexte, the proudest achievement of this so-called "alternative media" podcast was when Bexte stalked Trudeau on vacation, harassing him on a beach in Tofino. Bexte, by the way, was a student at U of Calgary who, based on a Gauntlet investigation, invented a fake person so he could send out emails from the Wildrose student organization about how "feminism is cancer." Then Bexte pretended "Robert McDavid," not him, was to blame. He seems GREAT. And the UCP just gave him over $100,000 in 2024.

We'll end with something a bit more positive. Buried among all the insanity this past week, India quietly became the fourth country to independently achieve a spacecraft-to-spacecraft dock. The Hindustan Times has a good breakdown on what this entailed, and talks a lot about what is planned next for India's ambitious space goals, which include returning to the moon and their own space station to rival the ISS and China's Tiangong.

It's going to be an interesting 25 years to 2050, the milestone for a lot of these future space plans, as well as, not coincidentally, a major point we've identified for climate points of no return.

It's been an absolute whirlwind of activity in the digital world lately. First, Zuckerberg tore up Meta's last few shreds of basic decency, announcing they would be eliminating fact checkers while also rolling back their rules against hateful conduct to specifically institutionalize hatred against LGBTQ people, who can now be called "mentally ill" with impunity, and against women, who can now be called "property," so long as you cite some weird religious exemption.

But things got even more wild when the Biden administration made good on their threat to ban Chinese-owned app TikTok, which sparked a flurry of activity that included Donald Trump, who originally floated the ban in the first place, suddenly doing a 180 and promising he would issue an executive order rescinding the ban.

Now, there's a few things to highlight here. First, Trump can't do that. While the rule of law is now a tenuous thing in the United States, what with the stacking of the Supreme Court with rapists and criminals, Trump can't simply reverse an act of congress. He CAN pass orders that prevent enforcement of the ban, at least temporarily.

But perhaps more crucially, he's openly touted that all TikTok has to do to come back is be sold to an American oligarch. And he's putting forward names.

And believe it or not, because the Democrats were all-in on this insanely stupid policy, that would actually fit with the legal framework of their ban, which targeted Chinese ownership specifically.

What's appalling about how this has unfolded is that Democrats have played perfectly into Trump's hands. He gets the benefit of appearing as the defender of freedom, particularly to a younger demographic that uses TikTok (including as a sole source of news), AND he now gets to transfer ownership to one of his billionaire cronies.

But perhaps the most terrifying part of all of these moves, not just with TikTok, is how quickly we've been reminded of how tech companies have infiltrated our daily lives and how they're able to flex that control.

Depending on these lines of communication for information about the world around us, from friendships to businesses to news, has left us vulnerable to control and corruption. Our information streams are now in a stranglehold, from Google to Meta to X to TikTok.

In my last e-newsletter, I talked about switching from Google to Mojeek, and while that has definitely improved my search engine experience, I'm fully dependent on my Gmail. It would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle my life from that. My banking, phone, internet, utilities, payroll information...hell, even my health care and driver's license are tied up in that single email address.

In the social media realm, I've pledged to get off Meta's platforms, but I've realized that I will be giving up a lot. It will also make functioning in society difficult. No, really.

I'll give you a simple example.

I'm thinking of volunteering for Tsukino Con, a local anime convention. As part of that duty, they strongly urge volunteers to sign on to their private Facebook group, where updates and information are posted. So far as I can tell, this is the main communications apparatus for talking to volunteers. If things go awry on the dates of the event, such as volunteers not showing or being ill, I have no doubt they will be posted first there.

I won't see any of that.

But I don't see any other path forward.

While I don't expect everyone to follow me in deleting their accounts, precisely for the reasons I've mentioned, I do think we need to be considering just how entrenched our lives are in these apps.

In capitalist ideology, you're supposed to create a product that's in demand. That quickly became twisted into "create demand for your product," such as withholding necessary goods, like food and shelter. And in social media, they've invited us in on the promise of a fun tool for connection, but then they infiltrated all parts of our daily lives, wheeling and dealing with governments and health care operators and phone companies and more, all to make sure we were addicted.

And now, they've slammed the door shut behind us.

I still see a tiny sliver of an escape route, but it's closing fast. There are open-source platforms using the fediverse, like Mastodon or BlueSky. There are non-profit groups like Mozilla and Wikipedia. I also see people like Elon Musk gnashing their teeth and demanding that Wikipedia be shut down or sold to them.

They want it all.

We can't let them have it. We can't let them have us.

The right-wing made it a mantra that they were being "red-pilled;" an oblique reference to The Matrix (ironically, made by two Trans filmmakers who detest the right-wing). I think we need to reclaim that notion and take it almost literally. As much as humanly possible (pun intended), it's time to unplug from the Matrix.

To stay on these platforms is to invite further control and manipulation. It's going to be hard, but I think it's now or never.

This is only going to get worse.

Except LinkedIn, maybe? Somehow?

That wraps up issue #3 of Volume II The Lagrange Point! If you enjoyed this little e-newsletter, please consider subscribing, or, if you're already subscribed, sharing it with a friend or family member!

I can't grow this e-newsletter alone. I need lots of mouths spreading lots of words about why people should read The Lagrange Point.

Until next Monday, thank you for reading!

-Tim