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Macarthur fellow and Hugo-award-winner @nkjemisin's 2019 book "The City We Became" is both a fantastic contemporary fantasy novel and a scorching commentary on the infantile nature of the racist dogma of HP Lovecraft and his
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First, the five boroughs must find one another and connect with the primary.
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https://t.co/TtMuSzCgSz
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In this telling, xenophobia is just the adult version of a toddler's unwillingness to eat their peas if they touch the mashed potatoes.
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More from Cory Doctorow #BLM
There are lots of problems with ad-tech:
* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;
* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;
1/
* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");
* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and
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* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;
That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.
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Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.
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Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the
* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;
* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;
1/
* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");
* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and
2/
* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;
That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.
3/
Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.
4/
Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the
The numbers are all fking fake, the metrics are bullshit, the agencies responsible for enforcing good practices are knowing bullshiters enforcing and profiting off all the fake numbers and none of the models make sense at scale of actual human users. https://t.co/sfmdrxGBNJ pic.twitter.com/thvicDEL29
— Aram Zucker-Scharff (@Chronotope) December 26, 2018
I've just read one of the most lucid, wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary critiques of cryptocurrency and blockchain I've yet to encounter. 1/
It comes from David "DSHR" Rosenthal, a distinguished technologist whose past achievements including helping to develop X11 and the core technologies for Nvidia.
https://t.co/tkAMShno4k 2/
Rosenthal's critique is a transcript of a lecture he gave to Stanford's EE380 class, adapted from a December 2021 talk for an investor conference. 3/
It is a bang-up-to-date synthesis of many of the critical writings on the subject, glued together with Rosenthal's own deep technical expertise. He calls it "Can We Mitigate Cryptocurrencies' Externalities?"
The presence of "externalities" in Rosenthal's title is key. 4/
Rosenthal identifies blockchainism's core ideology as emerging from "the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley and the cypherpunks," and states that "libertarianism's attraction is based on ignoring externalities."
This is an important critique of libertarianism. 5/
It comes from David "DSHR" Rosenthal, a distinguished technologist whose past achievements including helping to develop X11 and the core technologies for Nvidia.
https://t.co/tkAMShno4k 2/
Rosenthal's critique is a transcript of a lecture he gave to Stanford's EE380 class, adapted from a December 2021 talk for an investor conference. 3/
It is a bang-up-to-date synthesis of many of the critical writings on the subject, glued together with Rosenthal's own deep technical expertise. He calls it "Can We Mitigate Cryptocurrencies' Externalities?"
The presence of "externalities" in Rosenthal's title is key. 4/
Rosenthal identifies blockchainism's core ideology as emerging from "the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley and the cypherpunks," and states that "libertarianism's attraction is based on ignoring externalities."
This is an important critique of libertarianism. 5/
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).
Inside: Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity; Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity; Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets; and more!
Archived at: https://t.co/1rRmrJa4FK
#Pluralistic
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Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity: A thoughtful analysis.
https://t.co/2T74ykb3Ws
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Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity: I thought about it some more.
https://t.co/mTQ225Lr3X
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Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets: Even if there's no angels, there's still a path to glory.
https://t.co/x7BaqUQ0hj
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#10yrsago Morrow’s Diviner’s Tale is a tight, literary ghost story https://t.co/XFW0AGFwhI
#10yrsago ATM skimmer that doesn’t require any modifications to the ATM
Inside: Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity; Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity; Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets; and more!
Archived at: https://t.co/1rRmrJa4FK
#Pluralistic
1/
Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity: A thoughtful analysis.
https://t.co/2T74ykb3Ws
2/
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha https://t.co/ARlJ7vGOev
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 29, 2021
Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity: I thought about it some more.
https://t.co/mTQ225Lr3X
3/
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha https://t.co/2T74ykb3Ws
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 29, 2021
Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets: Even if there's no angels, there's still a path to glory.
https://t.co/x7BaqUQ0hj
4/
A couple days back, I wrote up my best understanding of what happened with /r/wallstreetbets and meme stocks like Gamestop, trying to show how all the different, seemingly contradictory takes on the underlying financial stuff could all be true.https://t.co/xWzre4r0Yj
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 30, 2021
1/ pic.twitter.com/p4oiq2TdSg
#10yrsago Morrow’s Diviner’s Tale is a tight, literary ghost story https://t.co/XFW0AGFwhI
#10yrsago ATM skimmer that doesn’t require any modifications to the ATM
More from Culture
I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
The emerging picture of John Sullivan aka Jayden X, the Cap riot agitator, and the documentarian Jade Sacker who filmed the whole thing really is the perfect microcosm of how Globalist American Empire stages its narrative.
Here’s the summary overview:
First Sullivan: agent provocateur who is no more antifa/BLM than he is Proud Boy, with suspicious family ties to the security state (allegedly), who helps instigate and document the Jan 6 events leading to IC officials immediately demanding the removal of the incumbent regime...
The guy’s social media profile is all over the map. From Civil Liberties gun guy to Antifa activist. And who planned the Utah BLM event that ended in the bizarre car shooting. His feed since Jan has all led to the Cap Hill events, including the first of the Parlor call outs.
Okay so maybe the guy is just a confused burn-it-all-down nihilist. Possible, but then we might do a big think about how an unhinged political schizo gets hooked up with a filmmaker with a long-history of doing activist/journalism on behalf of Woke Imperialism...
If John Sullivan aka Jaydenx is the “Fake,” Jade Sacker, his accomplice, is the “Gay.” Here’s a few snapshots from her portfolio (https://t.co/YEO1CCsQn8)
The plight of Rohingya Muslims. The Kurds in Northern Syria. Trans Women in Cambodia. etc. Boiler plate globohomo
Here’s the summary overview:
First Sullivan: agent provocateur who is no more antifa/BLM than he is Proud Boy, with suspicious family ties to the security state (allegedly), who helps instigate and document the Jan 6 events leading to IC officials immediately demanding the removal of the incumbent regime...
The guy’s social media profile is all over the map. From Civil Liberties gun guy to Antifa activist. And who planned the Utah BLM event that ended in the bizarre car shooting. His feed since Jan has all led to the Cap Hill events, including the first of the Parlor call outs.
Okay so maybe the guy is just a confused burn-it-all-down nihilist. Possible, but then we might do a big think about how an unhinged political schizo gets hooked up with a filmmaker with a long-history of doing activist/journalism on behalf of Woke Imperialism...
If John Sullivan aka Jaydenx is the “Fake,” Jade Sacker, his accomplice, is the “Gay.” Here’s a few snapshots from her portfolio (https://t.co/YEO1CCsQn8)
The plight of Rohingya Muslims. The Kurds in Northern Syria. Trans Women in Cambodia. etc. Boiler plate globohomo
