Dwayne Monroe

@cloudquistador

Cybernetics • AI Resistance • Dialectics • Film Noir • Sun Tzu • • vdgasjournal.com

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¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y cloudquistador.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Apr 15

In this graphic, I visualise the likely impacts of oil shortages, caused by US/Israeli aggression, on the tech industry. The 'AI' bubble may pop for geopolitical and material, rather than purely financial reasons. The financial markets can pretend but supply chains cannot be fooled

Diagram showing the links between data centres, the heart of tech industry power, and oil-dependent supply chain flows. It depicts a circle with the image of a data center and circles around this for energy, plastic, transport computer chip and plastic manufacturing

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Apr 13

About this, I suggest the book, 'The Accumulation of Waste' by Ali Kadri. Kadri's thesis is that death is commodified by and key to capitalism. Yudkowsky is saying this out loud

Cover of the book, The Accumulation of Waste by Ali Kadri. The sub-title is: A Political Economy of Systematic Destruction

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Apr 5

As the data centers burn, I imagine sharing a glass with General Martok

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Mar 28

The US academy in its terminal phase

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Mar 21

The new arrivals

Covers of three books I recently purchased: The Accumulation of Waste by Ali Kadri, The Assasination of Julius Caesar by Michael Parenti and From the Bog to the Cloud by P. Breshinan and P. Brodie

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Mar 4

"Things are changing fast" the man wrote. He's right. Here's video showing the result.

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Feb 17

Besides the boring, and common 'AI' tropes therein, the page creator(s) give us evidence of zero understanding of how systems function in this bit. For decades, people have explained how and why a reset to zero clears errors. What are they on about?

Screen shot from the 'unreplug' website. The text reads: The number of people who have ever explained why unreplugging works. You just do it. It just works. Don't ask questions.

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Feb 7

Currently reading this outstanding book which, among other virtues, foregrounds the real world application of dialectical materialism and the fact we are in a world war. mronline.org/2026/01/02/w...

Cover of the book, 'Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism' by Gabriel Rockhill. It shows a black and white photo of a gathering of academics in the 1950s. The sentence, 'The Intellectual World War' is above the image and the book title, and Gabriel Rockhill's name are below

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 29

Good indeed. I still have my first edition copy of 'The Mismeasure of Man' which, as a young, Black kid in the hostile US context, I studied and wielded like Thor's hammer against 'IQ' fetishists.

Picture of a copy of Stephen Jay Gould's book, 'The Mismeasure of Man'. It shows the image of a human skull from a 19th century book on phrenology and the title, and author's name

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 27

We mustn't merely critique tech capitalism, but, as @olivia.science has done with CAIL (olivia.science/ai) propose solutions. I'm writing a 'What is to be Done' pamphlet, inspired by Lenin's 1902 statement: youtu.be/C-eCCtzsiXY?...

Image showing the original cover of the pamphlet written in 1902 by VI Lenin 'What is to Be Done' in Cyrillic script

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 21

Years ago, on Twitter, I shared this diagram I created that shows the reply doctrine I use. It also applies here

Diagram showing the decision tree I follow to decide if, and how I reply to posts. It depicts a yes/no/stop/go logic based on whether or not replying is useful

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 16

Like all such automations using lang models, this obscures and disempowers. To counter this, some friends and I have started a Signal Group, 'Dialectical House Party' in which, we study the Vietnamese approach - signal.group#CjQKILu9ytRs...

Cover of an English translation of the Vietnamese book, Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Lenism

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 13

Your weekly reminder (the first of more to come) that one of this account's key purposes is boosting your good work - your essays, papers, videos etc. Send them my way for a repost. Making ex cathedra pronouncements is not enough; let's support each other's thought

Still image of computer control panel from the set for the Discovery spacecraft used for Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey released in 1968

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 5

Today is my birthday. Huzzah for continuation. In lieu of sending dilithium crystals, my preferred gift, needed for my..work, I ask for a show of hands: who wants to join me in making a zine? The topic: a guide to leaving 'the cloud' for activist orgs. Art thou in? Email dmonroe0707 at proton dot me

A picture of me, hand on chin, sitting at a table

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 4

It may be time to dump my oatmeal...

Excerpt from article: "Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas) are a group of chemicals that have been used in manufacturing and added to consumer products since the 1950s.
They are known as "forever chemicals" as they can take hundreds or even thousands of years to degrade after the products they have been used in are thrown away. This means that if they leak into the soil or water, which they often do, they could remain there for centuries. Their impact on human health and the environment is only just becoming clear, with new studies frequently emerging about some of the chemicals' links to diseases such as cancer."

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 2

Precisely. The opening paragraph reeks of rancid, yet warmed over Brit press fetishization of Calif; as old as the supposedly new and 'innovative' firms that are worshipped.

Image of opening paragrap of Guardian article, 'It’s going much too fast’: the inside story of the race to create the ultimate AI' - "As the northern California hills scroll past, instructions flash up on screens from bosses: fix this bug; add new script. There is no time to enjoy the view. These commuters are foot soldiers in the global race towards artificial general intelligence - when AI systems become as or more capable than highly qualified humans."

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Dec 1

I continue to read the accounts of people and orgs such as the Electronic Intifada, Justin Podur, Mark Ames, Ali Abunimah, Lilly Lynch and others who're carrying on in the face of decay. Still, it is indeed worse... this is what greets you as the app is launched

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 19

Reuters: 'OpenAI head and general fool, Sam Altman, desperate for "more electrons" turns for aid to one of Spiderman's oldest foes.'

1960s era cover of the comic book, The Amazing Spiderman' showing the villain Electro, shocking Spiderman

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 16

The Trump regime is not the beginning of US fascism, it has always been oppressive, but the acceleration of a particular type. As @harrysimmons3578.bsky.social has proposed, MAGA's contradictions make space for other fascists to move. Enter Greene, who has crossed the Rubicon

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 10

Once again for emphasis. This time, with a graphic borrowed from classic Trek and a diagram of factors I cooked up a few years ago

On the left side of the image, there's a still from classic Star Trek, showing Kirk firing a phaser rifle at a foe with no effect. This is captioned, Tech Industry Ideology vs the harsh, unforgiving facts of material reality. The right side of the image depicts the physical factors of the tech industry

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 5

It's interesting to note that the Italian originators of European fascism in Italy (where some of the most serious scholarship still happens) fetishized a mechanistic future of speed combined with a mythologized past. Current fascists, as Alberto Toscano states, lack even this.

Cover of Alberto Toscano's book, Late Fascism

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 4

Another lesson we can take from this marketing release thinly disguised as high level overview is that 'the west' has never been serious about addressing climate change. The ad includes this statement, then blithely goes on to say: 'let's try it even though the Earth, she burns!'

Picture of an excerpt from the article that reads as follows: "Of course, the discussion is not limited to this one topic. The use of generative Al is clearly not uncontroversial either when it comes to environmental impact, data provenance, transparency and privacy. In this blog, we only zoom in on the issue mentioned in the title"

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 3

Look at this carbuncle's work..

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 3

To the other suggestions, I'll add: although I think it's important to read key works (certainly Capital) the aim is to understand the method which can be applied to what we see. I find this very helpful:

Cover of Bertell Ollman's book, 'Dance of the Dialectic'

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Nov 2

I use the term, 'political economy' to describe how to *materially* analyze the tech industry and its 'AI' push. Here, applied dialectics, from Ollman's 'Dance of the Dialectic' and my notebook visualization.

A quote from the book, Dance of the Dialectic' -
The relation is the irreducible minimum for all units in Marx's conception of social reality. This is really the nub of our difficulty in understanding Marxism, whose subject matter is not simply society but society conceived of "relation-ally."

A photo of a diagram from my notebook showing the relationship between so called AI and the material relations supporting it

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Oct 22

A reminder...

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Oct 11

The simple beauty of this decades old, imagined interface almost makes me weep. We are forced to use stone knives and bear skins with a splash of paint and advertising...

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Oct 9

Good luck indeed. What will these men, who've built almost their entire identities on a few companies, do when capital dries up and collapse follows? www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Image from Bloomberg article, 'OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals'. It depicts a collection of circles representing each company, with lines showing investment interconnections between them

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Oct 9

Earlier today, someone wrote, as encouragement for dismayed US-ians, that Europe overcame fascism. I propose that this isn't the case, as near uniform elite support for genocide shows and, this, from Gabriel Rockhill: www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/t...

Screenshot of Counterpunch magazine from October, 2020. It shows Gabriel Rockhill's essay: The US Did Not Defeat Fascism in WW2, It Discretely Internationalized It

Dwayne Monroe@cloudquistador· Sep 28

Many posting can, and should, write essays, drawing upon expertise & experience. Most lack time and encouragement to pour knowledge into words. Journalists and academics aplenty: few practitioners. Behold Verdigris. Contact us: fire your arrows into the darkness - contact@vdgasjournal.com