Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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I was a mere lad of fifteen when I first encountered the Church of the Subgenius, a joke religion started by a group of prankster surrealists out of Austin and parts elsewhere. The faith is represented by J.R. āBobā Dobbs, a grinning, square-jawed salesman with a pipe clenched in his square, white teeth, who promises āslackā to all who profess the faith.
Slack wasāāāand isāāāan enticing concept. I always interpreted āslackā as a synonym for āforgiveness,ā that is, the idea that our systems would have graceful failure modes, in which errors and failings were never terminal, and could always be redone. A philosophy for an age of āSave Gameā and ā-Z.
Itās been a pretty great week. Ever since Apple announced that it would sell its customers spare parts and tools to affect their own repairs, and supply them with the documentation to do so, Iāve been thrilled to do my comradesā online victory laps. For a decade, Iāve fought alongside my pals in the Right to Repair movement against a coalition of the best-capitalized, most powerful multinational companies in the world, who used their incredible might to trample all other considerations: fairness, climate justice, safety, and security.
We introduced dozens of state right to repair billsāāābills that set out the principle that when you buy a product, you should get to decide who fixes itāāāand watched as, time and again, a coalition of big business, led by Apple, used lies and scare-talk to convince lawmakers to vote the bills down.
