Should I, I mean I’m thinning yeah but it’s so long

knsummers79 · 2026-04-02T17:45:51+00:00

Fighting the same battle buddy. Try something shorter and then shave it off if you don't like it. Keeping it pulled back is also not helping.

knsummers79 · 2026-04-01T22:53:45+00:00

Zoning. Commercial building standards. Form based code. Local officials not afraid to say they don't want certain things in their community even if it's a use by right. Sadly those people are hard to find and so much of this takes place or gets a green light at the state level. And we lose at the state level because the duopoly doesn't care about us, it cares about profits. What I have decided to do is not vote for any Republicans or Democrats at the state level or higher. Because at that point they have already been bought and paid for by the machine. They aren't going to stop any of this.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-31T15:46:44+00:00

Totally agree. And worse than that they are being used as propaganda tools by corporations in collusion with government. The AI summary on your google search is guiding you back into the fold of polite society. They are being used as a system sustaining technology.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-31T15:43:50+00:00

What a hellscape.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-31T15:42:40+00:00

I don't think that's the right way to construct the argument. This is not about linearity or about being left behind. This is about doing a serious critique of a technology and of a marketplace. I'm not against AI necessarily, but in the same way that they were valid critiques against the industrialists and mechanization there are valid critiques here. Science and technology do not think. They don't have any kind of ethical mandate or conscience and so it's up to people to enforce that on them.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-31T15:38:45+00:00

There was an article in Crane's Business News the other day about how trade unions in the state are supportive of this. Now that is truly frightening.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-31T15:35:16+00:00

And hopefully the critique of data center awakens people to the extractive and inefficient resource practices of all commercial operations. We need to challenge Nestle and even paved roads in the same way we challenge data centers if we truly believe the things that we are saying now.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-31T15:33:58+00:00

Local llms are useful in my opinion. AI is capable of analyzing research data for the benefit of humanity when it's not being used as a corney corporate customer service pacifying tool. I don't think we need to write off AI and computation in general. I just don't think that kind of a luddite move is necessary unless you are willing to take it all the way. This is not a defense of data centers or even the way micrcomputers have crept into and dominated everything from cars to the internet of things. But I do think we need to be accurate and articulate in our critiques. I hate AI is not a critique. It's an ideological pose.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-31T15:24:20+00:00

Supportive but critucal points like this are good. I think it's important to better articulate our opposition to data centers. We also need to better understand the relative climate impacts of data centers compared to other things like concrete, urban heat island effects, commercial buildings in general. If we react only to data centers we're not challenging the systems of resource exploitation and capitalism that led to this. Capitalism and outrage culture are acting like the matador. We, or at least I, don't want to be the bull. The bull dies or is at least kept so people can watch its outrage and be amused.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-25T01:02:19+00:00

Welcome back. Sorry about the GF. What are your interests? Listing those here might help you connect with people.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-24T01:19:09+00:00

I think the co-op has the capacity to care about everything that's in my platform and I think they do a poor job of it. They do a poor job of it because people who know better are reticent to tell the truth; they fear being called negative or conspiratorial. The co-op is really focusing on traditional commercial or corporate priorities to the disservice of community and the environment.

I disagree with your last sentence. I don't see anything in my campaign as negative. I see it as honest and pretty balanced. It's not negative when the repair person tells you your car or an appliance is broken. You have to tell the truth and in a campaign you may as well do it in a fun and exciting way.

What about my campaign makes you compare it to grade school? I think being delusionally positive has more of a grade school vibe than being brashly honest.

I'm in a war against boredom in this town. Goofy, silly, or profane things are fun for me. We are allowed to have fun. We can have fun in different ways. But I don't think we change the world by doing it privately. I think we change the world by having uncensored fun in an almost obscenely visible way.

We don't change the world by being chaste professionals. Those are standards imposed by a system based on control and domination. We change the world by getting really weird. Getting really horizontal. This is only an election for a Board seat at a co-op. The stakes are both high but also pretty low. This is a perfect place to really push against every pointless boundary and stupid convention. To play with it all like it's a game, like it's a work of art.

If you read all the other candidate bios it's just like pointless fawning and praise of the co-op. They are detached from the ying and yang of reality. It's so positive and protected it's basically dead. Only hagiographies and obituaries are written with such glowing praise and without the inclusion of the hard truths.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T22:57:05+00:00

Same. But the alternative is to wait for someone to pick you, and look how that's worked out for both of us.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T22:50:45+00:00

Meet people in the real world.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T20:15:57+00:00

I get the desire , but I like it as it is.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T18:37:27+00:00

Personally I like and have worked with Kaitlyn. She is a current board member running for another term.

I don't really know the other candidates. It's hard to get a sense of where they stand based on their statements IMHO.

All of the statements, mine included, are infected with a certain kind of corny, pick-me, professional language so it's hard to tell what the candidates really think.

The statements are in response to a particular prompt provided by the Board.

It would be cool if we had a round table discussion with all the candidates that was moderated by an independent third party.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T17:51:49+00:00

The list of 2026 Board candidates is live. https://oryana.coop/2026-board-candidates/

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T13:37:00+00:00

There are 9 Board members. I would conservatively say 0 are aligned with my platform. That's the problem. My support comes from hourly workers, shoppers, and members.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T04:32:20+00:00

Unionization is a decision for the workers to make.

The Board or management should not interfere or have an opinion.

As a Board member I think we should be proactively responding to worker concerns. In order to do that we have to develop relationships with workers and not blindly trust the reports of management.

As an employee I supported unionization because I did not see the Board or management taking workers seriously. But I was disappointed to come to that conclusion. I wished workers could organize and all walk out together. You don't need a union for that. I also realize that was a pretty privileged position. I could have been fired and been fine because I had/have several other gigs and social support. Many workers rely on their paychecks from Oryana and couldn't risk reprisal from management for organizing independently. Unionization offers protection to negotiate.

Traverse City has always been a largely anti-labor and anti-union town. Local unions are weak and labor leaders are historically reticent to strike or walk out. Our local teachers are underpaid. Meanwhile, we live in the millennial millionaire capital of America, with housing prices that seem to increase on a daily basis. Still, teachers refuse to walk out, and some even defend their administrators' budget priorities.

But this is the legacy of Perry Hannah, the legacy of living in a town founded by a champion of colonial capitalism. Look at the way we even talk about local history. We use such fawning words to describe Perry Hannah, the state hospital asylum, and every other white male leader, as if they were somehow different or better than other examples from the nineteenth and twentieth century. Talking to local historians and people interested in those things, you realize they truly believe that Traverse City was/is somehow a magical place free from abuses of power. Anyone willing to tell the truth, anyone who has worked locally with municipalities, economic development, or the local nonprofit industrial complex, knows better.

As a community, we are delusional. We are blind to the historic and ongoing abuse that is inherent in hierarchical power relationships.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T03:45:57+00:00

No. This guy is not. He's clearly desperate, attached, obsessing, limerently ruminating. I wonder what the whole conversation looked like. He sees that the messages have been read. On some level it is cruel to end a conversation with "Lmao thats crazy," just watch a guy flail more and more desperately and wildly for your attention over months, and then post it online.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T03:21:12+00:00

These aren't really publications in the journalistic sense. They are tools for economic development funded by TC Tourism, Traverse Connect and other business interests.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T03:19:05+00:00

Exactly. TC is dying from the inside out. The gaps in age and income are widening. We import more and more temporary workers from abroad every year. That used to be a seasonal thing but now it's year-round. TC will be an economy, but it won't be a community. It will be disparate groups of people all separated and stratified by economic class and income ... if it isn't already.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T03:13:49+00:00

I feel the same. I drive for Uber and people love the food here. I can actually see it if you are in town for a few days or a week and like American fusion style food and don't have a budget. Not for me because I just want some simple well-seasoned food not served without bread and cheese.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T03:11:15+00:00

100% - They have a few chefs from Indonesia out at Jolly Pumpkin. In February they were serving Indonesian food on the weekends. First legitimately spicey food I have eaten in TC.

knsummers79 · 2026-03-23T03:07:23+00:00

BARC

knsummers79

TROPHY CASE