Ever since listening to the first episode of Revolution Social with rabble and Jack Dorsey , my opinions on Dorsey have slightly changed. I didn't understand - not fully - why he allowed the sale of Twitter to Elon, but that episode talks more about it (tl;dr: capitalism wins over logic every time). That capital has been one he's been sitting on but as of late, he's been funding a lot of projects…
According to this piece, reading rates in America have collapsed - fewer than half of adults read a book in 2022 (which - eh - I feel like this is hard to assess), daily pleasure reading fell from 28% to 16% (which is both real and wild; if reading is dead then folks are going to be just told what to think) across (and this hurts me to repeat) every age, gender, and education level , even as total…
Erin Kissane is launching "Cloud Atlas" — an interview-based guide to the apps and projects emerging on the AT Protocol/Atmosphere, intended to make decentralized social media infrastructure more legible to people interested in alternatives to centralized platforms. This is something I haven't seen done from the outside — developers of these apps and services tend to be their own marketing…
Patrick Iber opened up this issue in an almost prophetic way with the editor's opening : The semiquincentennial celebrations planned by the White House will not be a demonstration of unity. They will celebrate the domination of one part of the country over the other. Donald Trump’s 250th will be a carnival, complete with a barker-in-chief, attempting to sell the idea that the United States is…
I enjoyed every moment of I Love Boosters . From Lakeith Stanfield's attempt to woo our lead character to the literal heightening of contradiction that led to a global workers' revolt — this is the kind of media that makes plain the difficulty of the people who are ignored and belabored for the comfort of the upper class. It focused on the production of fast fashion , the industry that's the…
This will have spoilers for the TV show, For All Mankind . I've been enjoying my binge watching of this show. My friend's wife suggested it and I've been hooked since. There's points of the show that make my leftist brain itch too much but it's part of the narrative of what makes America America - its jingoistic, racist but ever-curious, persistently curious and overly ambitious goal to get ahead…
Well, well, well - this is a bit of a doozy. Not shocking or surprising, but a doozy nonetheless. This report from Stanford highlights quite a few things: AI hiring tools are helping folks break the (weakly enforced) law around hiring bias. Blackbox (proprietary) systems help shield companies from this bias-as-a-service. "Black applicants are the most likely to be adversely impacted: 30% of Black…
Over the last few days, I've been speed running (at 1.75x) a podcast by Evan called https://revolution.social/ , which is a bit of a build-up to what his company is building; a "permission-less" social media network. I am a bearish person by trait and do not move under the notion of "assuming positive intent" — that has to be earned. That had me struggle with some of the insight that Evan provided…
Ghost is demonstrating the power of independent media being able to fight in a landscape of venture capital capture and corporate consolidation. The shape of the organization running Ghost is a non-profit, which is more common for open source projects to take on; another example of the lack of the need to run to the explicit for-profit model to make change. The excuses I tend to see about the…
I've been paying attention to changes in this company's attempt to create open e-paper technology . I'm quite a fan of the concept; it makes technology less encroaching on one's attention and helps with reading in low light and low power situations. In a world where everything is racing to (and passing!) 4K imagery, it's great to see folks focused on keeping our eyesight and focus intact.…
Drew makes a lot of good points in this piece regarding self-hosting. In a way, we see sprinkles of this when public universities keep e-mail infrastructure for those who are alumni. In a way, even looking at the postal office and its ability to support "virtual" mailboxes, allowing folks to operate public proxies to store information. The point Drew makes about libraries being critical in this…
This thing opened up with something that I couldn't relate to: putting questions, big or small, into a generative text tool to get an answer from. I understand that Google, Microsoft and Apple are educating as many people as possible that this is an okay thing but we don't have to keep parroting it. Anyway. I recommend walking through the results: the demographics , the disabilities markers and…
Provocative title aside, Tante's derived point about free software being optimized for those who are comfortable for hackers is astute. It's definitely a big factor as to why you don't see folks in BestBuy or Target asking clerks, "does that come with Linux pre-installed"? Part of the experience is the expectation that folks will and can "do it themselves". Organizations have tried to combat this…
The video's creator warns early that this is a "old man yelling at cloud" kind of video and I think they do themselves a disservice with that. The ability to search for information is a skill on decline and that's a big "winning" attribute of technology: to remove as much labor as possible from humans, regardless of the task. Need a house cleaner? There's an app for that! Need to dig your heels…
Cory's interview with DemocracyNow came across my reader this morning and I was glad to hear someone speak on the internal class struggle of tech workers: especially software engineers. One only needs to look for a reference as to how technology under capitalist society works very marginally to improve the lives of the few who can afford it and cannibalize the labor of those who keep it up. In…
The concept of colonialism, the expanding of control of a people, their environment and culture, is foreign to the American populace; at least those who are "citizen-native" [1] . This article is co-authored by the same authors of Data Grab . It's a succient explainer of what many folks have been chided as "extreme", "ridiculous" or "outlandish" for: the core purpose of the companies of the…
The CEO opening with a statement that "we're the only company that can announce a product and it look the same each year with applause" made me smile but Apple has definitely locked in that title. To their credit, as a Framework 13" owner, these machines are built such that you won't have to keep replacing it over and over. Because of things I'm working on the side, I immediately noticed a few…
If you've been in the industry since 2020 , the notion of the leading executives in the industry being in favor of right-wing policies shouldn't be surprising. If since 2000, it should actually be part of your canon history how you've seen it shift right. So far, the executives who are openly in favor of Trump being president (as far as congratulating his new victory) are: Apple: Tim Cook…
I appreciate that Muan's so transparent about this post. Some of what they mention are things I yearn for as well. I have their #3 handled with Stella but her age does increase the difficulty of having a pet — she'll be 12 next year. I'm glad that they've taken this leap.
One thing I find about authors; good ones, is that they can give a good talk. Doctorow's one of them. While I have gripes with his work on Chokepoint Capitalism , it'd be disrespectful to ignore the research and accessibility of the book itself. This talk opens up with a quick retelling and explaining as to how finance began taking control of then-utility-centric companies became more degraded…
Jose Vilson's reflection on the role of how education, as a marker of status, of identity and of self-direction gave me a bit to think about. I'm not the popular type of Haitian; I don't folllow any organized religions, I don't have any form of heavy accrediations and I don't optimize myself around making a lot of money. For many migrants and children thereof, there is a pressure to assimiliate…
As much as I understand some folks for wanting computers to reduce the amount of rote tasks we employ, I still can't shake the pending nature of violence that's happening with the reallocation of funds in favor (or rather, at the whims) of corporate propganda that this is the best use of capital in society. I've mentioned it a few times on Mastodon, but we've (re)entered a point in society where…
I have no intention in reading Swisher's book . I make it a personal policy to read things that work to expand my understanding and after listening to an episode of Tech Won't Save Us where the author of this article was invited to speak, this book doesn't seem like it'd do so. Something Edward mentions her is how I felt about other journalists when it came to handling things like the situation of…
Dash opens this piece with level setting about his position of wealth [1] and balances that with his own background. He grounds it with the notion that rich people are willing to potentially forego a tight bond with their families in order to accumulate wealth. This is historically accurate [2] . It's short but the closing point about the storage and accumulation of money versus the ability to…
I listened to this episode while doing some cleaning this morning. Tracy's someone I know of during my time in California. I learned more about her from this interview than I anticipated [1] . Her work with BlockParty is something I've mentioned to friends and I'm glad to see that it survived the mayhem wrought by Musk and has expanded beyond that platform. I do have to say, I'm slightly…
Anil writes briefly about the nature of billionaires and tech venture capitalists from his experience around them. Folks who seem to imagine themselves as the new Rockfellers and the ilk, with near-full control over industry and policy when it comes to tech. Tech, both as a concept and an identity (to some), effectively moves to their whim. He concludes mentioning his faith in those working…
Karla's piece finally came on my radar after reading about the grift of the founder of Raheem AI . I did not expect this to come out such of an organization, but as I've mentioned to her on BlueSky in response , this is a subtle growing (if not already metastasizing) issue within leftist coalitions and how we deal with money. I can't lie, someone using organizational funds to blow $50,000 on…
Pacifism as a concept perplexes me [1] so this reading of the role that these two concepts, anarchism and pacifism, had in contributing to the anti-war movement was interesting. However, this review has made some statements that I can't disagree with. It opens up strong: Violence is not all the same. Context matters. There’s something much worse about violence when it’s perpetrated by or with the…
Facebook is an advertising company. It makes a considerable amount of money from advertising [1] . This is not to be shocking but a warning. The fact that someone has managed to flip it in the app is indicative of whatever soft attempt that they had with "joining the Fediverse" could introduce them scooping up the open social Web as part of a larger advertising network beyond their walls. App…
I understand (to a degree) how photo editing works. I also (to a even lesser degree) understand this for AI photo editing. But now Google, being the alleged arbitor of truth and knowledge has given society a tool that can effectively rewrite history if folks aren't paying attention. And we're really too tired too because we, as a society, are continuing to accept empty promises as policy notes.…
This book review immediately introduced me to quite a bit that I had to look up. Before we had the FBI as it stood today, we had the National Bureau of Criminal Identification in 1896. It was seemingly formed in response (if not to help track) the rise of anarchism in the United States, specifically after the assassination of President McKinley . I didn't know a president outside of JFK was killed…
This is another hit from the Fall 2023 issue of Dissent ; following the previous one about the Supreme Court and union striking power. Money and the Left in the United States is such a sticky topic . This article does a better job than I can on explaining the situation specifically from the non-profit angle. It references a book I'm eager to dive in on the topic raised by women and femmes of color…
This piece by Veena Dubal for Dissent has been the longest read in this issue for me. So many moments where they've expanded on how, even despite Justice Jackson's work to highlight how striking is necessary for workers in a democratic society, the majority opinion is increasinlgy swaying towards corporate control. They include a quote from Sean O'Brien after the case of Glacier vs Teamsters that…