To be optimistic for once: It’s always darkest before dawn. That is, the reason that the elites are lashing out so cruelly is that they are getting more and more desperate as some of them can’t help but notice that the wheels are coming off of this whole rent-extraction contraption that they’ve built.

Sloppy Jenga TowerSome of the other are just yanking Jenga bricks out of the tower of the global economy as fast as they can, utterly oblivious to or uncaring about the degree to which they’re destabilizing their... [More]

This video of Donald Trump going off the rails is a couple of months old already but the content doesn’t really matter. He’s still doing the same song-and-dance, keeping the plates spinning and the plebes distracted while he makes himself richer.

Trump dancesHe’s benefitted less than a handful of other billionaires but he and his family have gained about $3B since he took office. Those are incredible numbers but no-one with any power really seems to care. There is no real uproar about it. He’s still... [More]

The article Smartphone Buyers Care Even Less About AI Than They Did Last Year, CNET Survey Finds by Abrar Al-Heeti (CNet) contains the following illuminating graphic.

Almost no-one cares about AI on their phone

“In 2024, the biggest motivation for US smartphone owners to upgrade their devices was longer battery life (61%), followed by more storage (46%) and better camera features (38%). Just 18% said their main motivator was AI integrations. This year, it appears that number is even lower, even as AI capabilities become more ubiquitous. ”

“Just 13% of people... [More]”

The article Where’s the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don’t Add Up by Mike Judge is an interesting read that makes the following argument, more or less,

“If so many developers are so extraordinarily productive using these tools, where is the flood of shovelware? We should be seeing apps of all shapes and sizes, video games, new websites, mobile apps, software-as-a-service apps — we should be drowning in choice. We should be in the middle of an indie software revolution. We should be seeing 10,000 Tetris... [More]”

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Economy... [More]

This Record Label Is Trying To SILENCE Me by Rick Beato (YouTube)

Rick Beato was forced to hire a lawyer to defend his fair-use playing of artist’s music in his videos. The labels abuse the copyright-strike system and Google cheerfully goes along with it.

He has “successfully fought thousands of them—never lost one—they still keep coming in.”

There is no way for him to defend himself against these without a lawyer. UMG (Universal Music Group)—or, most likely, the third-party firm that they hired to enforce their copyrights—are not punished at all... [More]

This 21:36-long video is chock-full of useful information: use a real VPN (not a free one; be sure of the vendor), hide your real email address wherever possible, stop clicking sponsored links in search results—although he doesn’t recommend to use a search engine other than Google—, use an authenticator app for 2FA instead of text messages, etc.

The Truth About Those Age Verification Pop-Ups by Evan Edinger (YouTube)

0:54  Details of the UK’s Online Safety Act
3:19  Recent “unavoidable” Data Leaks 
4:55  Why the Online Safety Act Immediately Fails
7:10  How... [More]

I had a lovely discussion with a dear Slovakian friend just this past weekend. We agreed that we seem to think well of individuals but that people in groups are nearly always detestable and that mankind is doomed.

We further agreed that, although we are very likely unwittingly sometimes part of the problem, there is nevertheless nothing for it but to continue to try to drag each and every one of us,... [More]

“Pyramid schemeWe live in a system that is utterly incapable of evaluating anything on its actual merit and suitability to task when there is so much more money to be made by lying about it instead.”

“Now that the neighborhood is nice, why do I have to move?When colonization happens within a country, we call it gentrification.

“We are encouraged to believe that pricing people out of their homes is somehow following a law of nature, that it’s not immoral or violent.

“Whereas the word ‘colonization’ has negative connotations, ‘gentrification’ sounds kind of nice, like you’re making things better.

“You are making things better, but for the conquerors, not the conquered.

“The conquered can take a long walk off a short pier.”

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Bern, SwitzerlandI was listening to the Swiss news on the radio a couple of weeks back. There had been pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Bern the day before. Instead of discussing why people were protesting, the reporters dutifully reported about the damage that had been caused and dutifully reported on right-wing politicians who blamed it all on leftists and Antifa, as they’d been dutifully instructed to do by their ideological masters in the U.S., to whose Truth Social accounts they’ve all dutifully... [More]

I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.A friend sent me the article Finger weg von den neuen KI-Browsern by Michael Andai (20min) (“Hands off of the new AI-browsers”).

The article largely focuses on the grievous security holes in these browsers, making them not browsers but data-exfiltration apps. In an age of unprecedented scammery, it is an affront that these tools even exist.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

With a web browser, you type in an address and see the content hosted for that address. You trust your browser to deliver—unfiltered and... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

This is also a couple of months old but remember when, about 400 news cycles ago, federal museums like the Smithsonian were told to dial it back on exhibits that cast slaveholders in a bad light? I don’t recall hearing whether that was retracted in the meantime. Probably not, because so many closet racists have positively soared out of the woodwork and and are cheerily enjoying what I imagine is, even for them, a wholly unexpected moment in the sun that they will, characteristically, round up... [More]

Almost every line in the following video was important and necessary for people to hear. I dare say …. brilliant. This video seemed completely extemporaneous. It’s Hasan expressing his deeply held and well-considered beliefs, pretty much all of which I agree with. Chapeau.

TRUMP'S MILITARY REVENGE by HasanAbi (YouTube)

The video’s not even 20 minutes long and I found nearly all of it worth citing below.

“What could be a solution to crime? Great question. This has been something that thinkers have gotten together and and tried to find... [More]”

The article Trump & the Russophobes by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post) was written near the end of August—about two months ago—and discusses the U.S.‘s obsession with just absolutely hating first Bolsheviks, then the Soviet Union, and now Russia.

“I say this because Russophobia is about more, much more, than near-term geopolitical strategies and policy choices. This is a question that goes to the ideology that makes America America, to the collective psyche, to Otherness and identity (which are intimately related in the... [More]”

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Economy... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

The article It’s Not Socialism–It’s National Socialism by Liz Anderson (Crooked Timber) discusses how buying 10% of Intel does not a socialist make.

“When National Socialists speak of “the people,” they never mean, as social democrats do, all the people, but rather the “real” people, the ethno-racial-sexual-religious group that they identify with the nation, to the exclusion of all other citizens and denizens of the state.

“OtheringTrump, of course, checks all 3 National Socialist boxes. It’s no secret that his “real”... [More]”

The article Luck Shouldn’t Determine Our Fates by Ben Burgis (Jacobin) discusses a topic that has also been well-covered by Freddie deBoer in his book The Cult of Smart, namely that: modern, western society privileges intelligence above nearly everything else. I posit that our societies tend to privilege plunder and those who can do it without a twinge of conscience. Sociopaths, in other words.

“[Marxist analytic philosopher G. A.] Cohen calls his view “luck-egalitarianism.” He thinks inequalities are... [More]”

The article What Our World Sounds Like Now by Justin Smith-Ruiu (Hinternet) discusses how the grinding progress of the market toward maximizing margins by delivering the minimum amount of value that satisfies—sometimes by adjusting value delivered but mostly now by adjusting people’s expectations downward of what is satisfactory—affects music and how AI-produced music is a natural progression from blandly mediocre musical blasphemers of the past—who produced “lite” versions of everything: easy listening and muzak, which... [More]

The article Influencerism is the highest form of capitalist realism by Yasha Levine (Nefarious Russians) makes many interesting points, many of which have been made before, in other ways—perhaps most famously and thoroughly in Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent—but it almost always bears repeating because the lessons are so often and easily forgotten.

“[…] these technologies, while they have thrown off the old masters, have acquired a new one. And this new master is harder to see. It’s not a person who tells you what you can... [More]”

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

The article Only Liars And Manipulators Say Gaza Isn’t Starving by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack) makes what I consider to be a logical error in argument in the following passage,

“When a nation keeps having to publish denials that it is intentionally starving civilians, you can safely assume it’s because that nation is intentionally starving civilians. If you saw someone on social media loudly denying the latest allegations that they are a child molester over and over again for two years, you probably wouldn’t let them... [More]”