Links and Notes for August 18th, 2023

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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Science & Nature
• Art & Literature
• Philosophy & Sociology
• Technology
• Programming
• Fun
• Video Games

Economy & Finance

What Happens to All the Stuff We Return? by David Owen (New Yorker)

“Steady growth in Internet shopping has been accompanied by steady growth in returns of all kinds. A forest’s worth of artificial Christmas trees goes back every January. Bags of green plastic Easter grass go back every spring. Returns of large-screen TVs surge immediately following the Super Bowl. People who buy portable generators during weather emergencies use them until the emergencies have ended, and then those go back, too.”

“People who’ve been invited to fancy parties sometimes buy expensive outfits or accessories, then return them the next day, caviar stains and all—a practice known as “wardrobing.””

“It almost goes without saying that Americans are the world’s leading refund seekers; consumers in Japan seldom return anything.”

“When he buys shoes, for example, he typically orders two pairs, a half size apart. In brick-and-mortar stores, a pair of tried-on shoes will be re-boxed and reshelved. “From an Amazon viewpoint, the moment the box opens, you’ve lost the opportunity,” he said.”

“Pre-pandemic, a common shopping strategy was to study possible purchases in a regular store, then save a few dollars by ordering from Amazon. When in-person shopping became difficult, the best way to compare products was to order multiples and send back the rejects.”

They’re shooting themselves in the foot for a few dollars that they could actually afford to spend.

““A really good partner of ours does over fifty per cent of all the refurbishing of HP consumer printers in the U.S.,” Adamson said. “On all the newer printers, the only connection option is Wi-Fi, so when they refurb them they include a printer cable. Problem solved.””

“The two technicians that Hogan and I watched are members of a rapidly vanishing species: people who know how to repair stuff. It used to be that when something went wrong with our dishwasher, washing machine, or oven, my wife or I would call a guy who owned a local appliance-repair company.”

“The last time I called him, seven or eight years ago, he said that he’d had to get a job as a greeter at Home Depot, because nowadays when appliances malfunction most people simply buy new ones.”

“That change is partly the result of consumer ignorance and laziness, but manufacturers are at fault, too. Almost all modern appliances contain electronics, which not only have a limited life span but are also usually impossible to repair and expensive to replace. Our former repairman once told my wife and me that we should always buy the “dumbest” appliances we could find. […]”

Public Policy & Politics

Niger and the ‘New World Order’ by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“There is an arrogance in social relations the French at times seem to insist upon. They still dominate the extractive industries and other spheres of the economy as if independence—Niger claimed its in 1960—never occurred.”

“I imagine the back-channeling between Washington and Niamey is at this point nonstop, but the Nigerien coup’s leaders give the impression they are no more enamored of the American troops on Nigerien soil than they are of France’s. There are reports that some Nigerien officers favor a turn from U.S. to Russian military assistance, and specifically to the Wagner group, which is already active in Mali.”

“As a measure of the importance Washington attaches to Bazoum’s rehabilitation, none other than Victoria “Cookies” Nuland flew to Niamey earlier this week for several hours of talks with some of Niger’s military officials, though Tchiani and others leading the coup reportedly refused to see her. The State Department’s acting No. 2 got nowhere, even by her own account, having warned again that all U.S. aid to Niger hung in the balance. “We don’t want your money,” the new government tweeted afterward. “Use it to fund a weight loss program for Victoria Nuland.””

Why Are We in Ukraine? (On the dangers of American hubris.) by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne (Harper's Magazine)

“Washington’s message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests—the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War—was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.”

“By embracing what came to be called its “unipolar moment,” Washington demonstrated—to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow—that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed.”

“Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states—and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values—the post–Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.”

That is still too generous a formulation. The U.S. is an empire built on no principle but piracy. Period.

“[…] by so baldly intervening in Russia’s internal affairs, Washington signaled to Moscow that the sole superpower felt no obligation to follow the norms of great power politics and, perhaps more galling, no longer regarded Russia as a power with sensibilities that had to be considered.”

“American force would be used, and international law contravened, not only in pursuit of tangible national interests, but also in order to depose governments that Washington deemed unsavory […]”

“American policymakers presented Belgrade with an ultimatum that imposed conditions no sovereign state could accept: relinquish sovereignty over the province of Kosovo and allow free reign to NATO forces throughout Yugoslavia. (As a senior State Department official reportedly said in an off-the-record briefing, “[We] deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept.”)”

“Through a stenographic process in which “ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility,” to quote a retrospective investigation by the Wall Street Journal in 2001, this typical insurgency was transformed into Washington’s righteous casus belli. (A similar process would soon unfold in the run-up to the Gulf War.)”

“It was not lost on Russia that Washington was bombing Belgrade in the name of universal humanitarian principles while giving friends and allies such as Croatia and Turkey a free pass for savage counterinsurgencies that included the usual war crimes, human rights abuses, and forced removals of civilian populations.”

“Ignoring Moscow, NATO waged its war against Yugoslavia without U.N. sanction and destroyed civilian targets, killing some five hundred non-combatants (actions that Washington considers violations of international norms when conducted by other powers). The operation not only toppled a sovereign government, but also forcibly altered a sovereign state’s borders (again, actions that Washington considers violations of international norms when conducted by other powers).”

“NATO similarly conducted its war in Libya in the face of valid Russian alarm. That war went beyond its defensive mandate—as Moscow protested—when NATO transformed its mission from the ostensible protection of civilians to the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. The escalation, justified by a now-familiar process involving false and misleading stories pedaled by armed rebels and other interested parties, produced years of violent disorder in Libya and made it a haven for jihadis.”

“[…] because from the beginning Washington defined NATO expansion as an open-ended and limitless process, Russia’s general apprehension about NATO’s push eastward was inextricably bound up with its specific fear that Ukraine would ultimately be drawn into the alliance.”

“America’s ambassador to Moscow, William J. Burns, shared Merkel’s assessment. Burns had already warned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a classified email:”

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

“Thanks to a misleading rendition of events that members of the Kennedy Administration fed to a credulous press and later reproduced in their memoirs, most Americans see that episode as an instance of America’s justified resolve when confronted by an unprovoked and unwarranted military threat. But Russia’s deployment of missiles in Cuba was hardly unprovoked. Washington had already deployed intermediate-range missiles in Britain, Italy, and, most provocatively, in a move that U.S. defense experts and congressional leaders had warned against, on Russia’s doorstep in Turkey. Moreover, during the crisis, it was American actions—not Russian or Cuban ones—that would be considered aggressive and illegal under international law.”

“Washington therefore embarked on an extreme, perilous course to force their removal, issuing an ultimatum to a nuclear superpower—an astonishingly provocative move, which immediately created a crisis that could easily have led to apocalyptic violence. Additionally, in imposing a blockade on Cuba—a gambit that we now know brought the superpowers within a hair’s breadth of nuclear confrontation—the administration initiated an act of war that contravened international law. The State Department’s legal adviser later recalled, “ Our legal problem was that their action wasn’t illegal.””

“[…] given that, historically, Washington has responded aggressively to situations similar to those in which it has placed Russia today, the motive for Russian aggression in Ukraine is likely not expansionist megalomania but exactly what Moscow declares it to be—defensive alarm over an expansive rival’s military influence in a bordering and strategically essential neighbor. To acknowledge this is merely the first step U.S. officials must take if they wish to back away from the precipice of nuclear annihilation and move instead toward a negotiated settlement grounded in foreign policy realism.”

“The policies that Washington has pursued toward Moscow and Kyiv, often under the banner of righteousness and duty, have created conditions that make the risk of nuclear war between the United States and Russia greater than it has ever been. Far from making the world safer by setting it in order, we have made it all the more dangerous.”

The US-Iran Prisoner Swap: A Breakthrough or a Band-Aid? by Sina Toossi (Jac)

“The deal stands out as a rare positive development amid worrying signs, such as the United States sending thousands of more troops to the Persian Gulf region and reportedly considering the option of deploying US troops on commercial vessels to deter Iranian oil tanker seizures, a tactic that Washington has not used since World War II.”

“That deal was a landmark achievement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions. It had the backing of Iran and six world powers, the endorsement of the United Nations, and was widely praised in the international community as a win-win solution.”

It was absolutely a horseshit strong-arming of a non-belligerent and largely peaceful country by two of the world’s most belligerent ones, abusing international mechanisms along the way, and agreed to by the international community because it’s terrified that it will be next and is only too happy to sacrifice Iran and its claim to justice on the altar of its own safety, regardless of how fantastical the accusations and how mad the demands.

“Iran has responded by threatening other oil exports from the strategic Persian Gulf, from which a fifth of the world’s oil flows. This is the crucial background that is often overlooked by the US media, which often portrays Iran’s oil tanker seizures as aggressive acts rather than desperate measures to defend its own economy.”

Like Pearl Harbor and the Cuban Missile Crisis, we love to remember the wrong history, dooming us to repeat the one that actually happened, with us completely unaware that we’re repeating it. For us, it’s the first time, each time with a new ultimate enemy against our ultimate and exceptional good.

“[…] he has continued to impose harsh sanctions and seize Iranian oil shipments, violating international law and provoking Iranian retaliation. As former CIA analyst Paul Pillar recently noted, “It was the United States, not Iran, that began the latest round of going after another nation’s tankers and seizing its oil.””

Western press fetishizes Ukrainian amputees as limb loss epidemic grows by Kit Klarenberg (The Grayzone)

“On August 1, The Wall Street Journal reported that “between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians” have “lost one or more limbs since the start of the war.” What’s more, the outlet notes, “the actual figure could be higher” because “it takes time to register patients after they undergo the procedure.”
By comparison, around 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons underwent amputations during the entire four-year span of the First World War.”

“In a July 8 op-ed titled “They’re Ready to Fight Again, on Artificial Legs,” Kristof insisted that rather than resenting being used as cannon fodder, Ukraine’s newly-disabled veterans “carry their stumps with pride.””

“Citing one soldier who expressed hopes of returning to the frontline despite missing three limbs, Kristof framed such “grit and resilience” as a sure sign Kiev is winning the proxy conflict, and will inevitably emerge victorious over Russia.”

In a tweet, Kristof expanded on this theme, “That grit is why Putin is losing. Amazing people.”

Ok, Joseph Goebbels. JFC have you no shame?

If you read on, you’ll see that Kristof found (or invented, because, honestly, who knows?) a soldier who got laid because he’s an amputee. “Kristof quoted the soldier as follows: ‘It’s magical. Someone can have all his arms and legs and still not be successful in love, but an amputee can win a heart.’”

“Over the course of two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, around 1,650 US veterans underwent amputation, according to the most recent figures available. And though that relatively small number has often been attributed to improvements in medical technology, American troops were also fighting lopsided skirmishes against poorly equipped adversaries operating without the benefit of air cover.”

“Since publishing its grim survey of Ukraine’s amputation epidemic, The Wall Street Journal has churned out another depressing read for proxy war boosters. On August 13, the WSJ reported that Kiev’s failure to make headway in its vaunted counteroffensive has forced military planners to look ahead to Spring 2024 for another opportunity that “might” tip the balance.”

Hooray.

Kanzler-Entgleisung: Pazifisten sind „gefallene Engel, die aus der Hölle kommen“ by Tobias Riegel (NachDenkSeiten)

“Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz hat bei einer kürzlichen Wahlkampfrede in München anwesende Kritiker des Kurses der Bundesregierung schwer beleidigt, wie Medien berichten. Im Laufe der Rede sagte Scholz an die Bürger gewandt, die für Waffenstillstand und Verhandlungen im Ukrainekrieg eintreten:”

“Und die, die hier mit Friedenstauben rumlaufen, sind deshalb vielleicht gefallene Engel, die aus der Hölle kommen, weil sie letztendlich einem Kriegstreiber das Wort reden.”

This isn’t the first time he’s done this, but it’s absolutely clear now where the German chancellor and his administration stand: anyone who disagrees with their path to war in Ukraine is simply a Putinist. That’s how simple that jackass’s world is. Useless.

Roaming Charges: Through a Sky Darkly by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“As Canada burns from border to border, Rich Kruger, the CEO of Suncor, the country’s biggest CO2 emitter, pledges to accelerate its fossil fuel production: “I play to win. We’re in the business to make money and as much of it as possible.””

“He’s not alone. Check out Bidenmentalism in action: US domestic crude oil production has reached 12.7 million barrels per day, up 600,000 barrels per day from one year ago, the highest level since 2020.”

“The IMF estimates that fossil fuels are being subsidized at rate of $13 million every minute or about $7 trillion a year.”

“More than 200 cargo ships are backed up waiting to enter the dwindling waters of the Panama Canal, where each crossing requires 51 million gallons of water. Mired in the worst drought since the opening of the Panama Canal more than 100 years ago, some ships are waiting more than 3 weeks to cross the canal, which handles around 40% of US container traffic.”

“The distance between between NYC and Chicago is roughly the same as that between Beijing and Shanghai. The NYC-CHI rail route is served by one train a day with the trip taking 19 hours. The Beijing – Shanghai route is served by 35 trains a day at 4.5 hours per trip.”

“California’s top single-point methane emitter is the Brandt Company cattle ranch in the Imperial Valley, which releases 9,137 metric tons a year, more than any oil or gas well, refinery or landfill. The 643-acre confined feeding operation confines at least 139,000 beef cattle. Each year, the ranch emits more greenhouse gas emissions than 165,000 automobiles. But the California Air Resources Board still refuses list dairies and livestock operations in its greenhouse gas reporting program.”

“According to the Department of Energy, in 2023, non-fossil fuel Sources will account for 86% of new electric utility generation capacity in the United States, primarily from solar (52%) and wind (13%), while batteries for stored energy will provide 17% of the new capacity. Natural gas is the only fossil fuel type contributing to new capacity and will account for 14% of the total. In contrast, nearly 100% of the capacity being retired is based on fossil fuel, led by coal (62%) and natural gas (36%). A total of 56.1 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity is being added and 14.5 GW of current capacity are being retired for a net gain of 41.6 GW in capacity.”

That’s actually good? I mean, we shouldn’t be adding capacity, but what the hell, at least it’s renewables?

Journalism & Media

YouTube

“Nick: And that’s also great, where Trump was […] he is destroying norms, therefore we are going to throw over our norms, preemptively, to get rid of him […]

“Matt: It’s like they’re incapable of learning anything, from any of these mistakes. And with the Russiagate things, it’s like it was happening in slow motion, at the time. They kept stepping in it, one story at a time. […]”

But they did learn the lesson. Nothing happened to them personally, other than they got filthy rich, kept their jobs, and grew their reputations among those who controlled their jobs and their access to wealth and power.

Lesson learned. They did it again.

The mistake Matt makes is assuming that they give a shit about journalism and its traditional role.

Their bosses were getting rich. The gravy train was running. There was no downside. There still isn’t.

Matt’s the one who had to leave the business.

Science & Nature

Collapse 2.0 by Michael Klare (Scheer Post)

“As of August 2021, 99% of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought, something for which there is no modern precedent. The recent record heat waves in the region have only emphasized this grim reality.”

“According to a 2022 report produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global oil consumption, given current government policies, will rise from 94 million barrels per day in 2021 to an estimated 102 million barrels by 2030 and then remain at or near that level until 2050. Coal consumption, though expected to decline after 2030, is still rising in some areas of the world. The demand for natural gas (only recently found to be dirtier than previously imagined) is projected to exceed 2020 levels in 2050.”

“The same 2022 IEA report indicates that energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide — the leading component of greenhouse gases — will climb from 19.5 billion metric tons in 2020 to an estimated 21.6 billion tons in 2030 and remain at about that level until 2050. Emissions of methane , another leading GHG component, will continue to rise, thanks to the increased production of natural gas.”

“There are many other ways in which societies are now perpetuating behavior that will endanger the survival of civilization, including the devotion of ever more resources to industrial-scale beef production. That practice consumes vast amounts of land, water, and grains that could be better devoted to less profligate vegetable production.”

“As of August 2nd, months after they first erupted into flame, there were still 225 major uncontrolled wildfires and another 430 under some degree of control but still burning across the country. At one point, the figure was more than 1,000 fires! To date, they have burned some 32.4 million acres of Canadian woodland, or 50,625 square miles — an area the size of the state of Alabama.”

“Canada has clearly lost control of its hinterland. As political scientists have long suggested, the very essence of the modern nation-state, its core raison d’être , is maintaining control over its sovereign territory and protecting its citizens. A country unable to do so, like Sudan or Somalia, has long been considered a “ failed state .””

“Such areas are relatively unpopulated, but they do house numerous indigenous communities whose lands have been destroyed and who have been forced to flee, perhaps permanently.”

To be fair, those indigenous communities would not have been able to put out the fires either. They may have been caused by something related to climate change, but they could always have happened—with a lower probability, of course. Had they happened, the indigenous communities would have been wiped out just the same.

“At the beginning of August, Beijing experienced its heaviest rainfall since such phenomena began being measured there more than 140 years ago. In a pattern found to be characteristic of hotter, more humid environments, a storm system lingered over Beijing and the capital region for days on end, pouring 29 inches of rain on the city between July 29th and August 2nd. At least 1.2 million people had to be evacuated from flood-prone areas of surrounding cities, while more than 100,000 acres of crops were damaged or destroyed.”

Drug makers have tripled the prices of top Medicare drugs by Beth Mole (Ars Technica)

“Overall, the average lifetime price increase for the top 25 drugs was 226 percent. The highest increases were seen in drugs that have been on the market the longest. For example, drugs that were on the market for under 12 years had an average lifetime price increase of 58 percent, while those on the market for 20 or more years had an average lifetime increase of 592 percent.”

These are medications to help people. Their primary purpose now is to help the shareholders of the companies who own the patents on them. If someone gets a medical benefit from them, then, sure, I guess that’s OK, too.

But society and the economy absolutely don’t care if that happens, else we wouldn’t have allowed the prices to rise that high. That it’s paid for my a government program that’s funded by all of our taxes is even worse.

The companies are simply milking the government, while enjoying a reputation for business savvy among the exact same people who think that the government should stay out of it while those companies just handle things directly—and, supposedly, more efficiently.

But those companies don’t function at all without these government subsidies. It’s the only reason they’re successful at all: their government-granted monopolies called patents, together with a government insurance program that is legally required to pay whatever price they ask.

“In 2021, Medicare Part D prescription drug plans spent $80.9 billion on these top 25 drugs, which were used by more than 10 million enrollees. AARP noted in its report that Medicare Part D enrollees take an average of four to five medicines each month, and 20 percent of older adults report using cost-coping strategies like skipping doses or not filling prescriptions to save money.”

Mission accomplished: provide the semblance of trying to care for the aged, while implicitly encouraging them to kill themselves sooner by skipping medications—incurring discomfort, if not suffering, along the way—but the primary goal remains achieved: lots of profits for shareholders of pharmaceutical companies. It’s a gold mine. You should totally invest in these companies. They guarantee a good rate of return.

Just don’t ask how they do it, because it’s a highly immoral business model—or perhaps amoral, since these entities don’t actually comprehend a model of the world that includes wishy-washy concepts like morality. Why not? Because there’s no money in morality. There’s literally no upside for being good in this society.

“The report lands amid drug cost-cutting measures in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The act requires drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare when they increase the price of drugs faster than the rate of inflation. And, under IRA provisions, Medicare will soon begin negotiating prices of drugs directly with manufacturers. On September 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will announce the first 10 drugs selected for price negotiations. Some of the drugs expected to be announced are among the top 25 costliest drugs analyzed in the AARP report.”

The party may be over, though, but I wouldn’t count these companies out. I’ll believe the hopeful formulation above when I see it.

“The Biden administration has said it will defend the IRA’s price negotiation program vigorously.”

Sure, sure, buddy. I’ll believe it when I see it. Go for it, though! Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt.

Is Luna 25 alive? Russia says an “emergency situation” has occurred by Eric Berger (Ars Technica)

“Russia’s efforts to reestablish communication with Luna 25 will be complicated by the country’s lack of a deep sp ace communications network. Satellite tracker Scott Tilley noted that the country’s ability to communicate with Luna 25 will be limited to when the Moon is visible over Russia. There are relatively few of these opportunities in the days ahead.”

Other countries have these deep-space communications networks, but since humanity is just a bunch of tribes, each wasting its own resources, no-one is going to think of helping Russia find their satellite. Maybe China will jump in. Absolutely no-one in the west will, as they’d all rather laugh than help. Americans, in particular, don’t even have an instinct for saving resources—they just use whatever they can afford or get their hands on without thinking about a dwindling supply of resources on the planet.

There is no notion that the Russian lunar lander would have done any useful science that is worth saving, so just let those Russians rot in their own mistakes and incompetence, is the attitude here.

“The loss of Luna 25—should efforts to restore communications with the spacecraft be unsuccessful—would represent a significant blow to the already reeling Russian space industry.”

Nobody in the west gives a shit because they’d much rather see a ton of resources wasted by an “enemy” country, failing to get into space. They’re probably gleeful. They don’t think that these are humanity’s resources being wasted—they just see it as Russia failing.

We Came, We Dithered, We Died by Ted Rall

“[He] wrote these words in 1971, for an New York Times op-ed titled “Our Oceans Are Dying.”

“No one listened.

“No one cared.

“No one did anything. So now, as Cousteau warned us would happen, our oceans are finished.

“More than 90% of coral reefs on Earth will be dead in the next 25 years. […]

“96% of all ocean life, fish big and small and everything that swims, will be gone as well. There’s nothing we can do to save them.”

““Pretty much nothing has been done since the global emissions of CO2 has not reduced,” Thunberg told a 2020 climate conference. “[I]f you see it from that aspect, what has concretely been done, if you see it from a bigger perspective, basically nothing.””

She’s correct. It doesn’t matter how much “progress” we’ve made toward a non-carbon economy. We’re still very much an economy that produces more CO₂ every year—and will continue to do so for at least a decade, despite all of our “progress.” We’re shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. The deck chairs sure look nice, but it doesn’t fucking matter because it’s all going to be at the bottom of the ocean soon.

“Capitalist idiots are so moronically capitalist that they’d rather be rich and dead than middle class and alive. The rest of us, the non- and anti-capitalist people who neither benefit from ecocide nor approve of it, are letting the greedy lunatics take us with them. We are […] even dumber than they are.”

Art & Literature

A.I. Filmmaking Is Not The Future. It's a Grift. by Patrick (H) Willems (YouTube)

At 27:00, Patrick says,

“The Curious Refuge guy[3] says that this is the same as artists having influences, that all artists borrow from other artists.

“Curious Refuge Guy: So, I am definitely more in the came of the whole steal-like-an-artist … uh … realm of thinking about creativity. And that idea is, essentially, that, all of us are pulling our creative ideas from other inspiration in our past. We just don’t, as humans, know, off the top of our heads, where those sources are coming from.[4]

“…which I think is a pretty astounding misunderstanding of what artistic influence actually is. Artistic influence is: Wes Anderson taking his love of Hal Ashby, François Truffaut, and Jacques Demy, and processing them into a unique approach that expresses his own view of the world. AI Art is just a machine for plagiarizing existing art.

“This guy says that AI is democratizing storytelling and making it possible for anybody to be a filmmaker. No. I’m sorry, but this is an insane take. Democratizing storytelling is what affordable filmmaking equipment did. It’s what, like, iPhones did. It’s what the Internet did. Those things gave people outside the traditional structures, without huge budgets and resources, the tools to create films and a free platform with which to reach a wide audience.

“Arguing for AI-filmmaking is saying that people no longer need talent or skill. Like, by this logic, why would learn to play the violin when you can use AI to create a fake violin recording of the piece of music that you want to play. The Curious Refuge web site says that they are, “empowering non-traditional artists,” which is hilarious to me, because that is just another way of saying “bad artists.” It’s like a steakhouse saying: “we serve non-traditional meals”, and then giving you a plate with a charred, black hockey puck on it.

“AI filmmaking is a grift. It is a way to make something that looks professional without putting in any of the work to learn how to do it for real and without paying an actual cast or crew. Look: I’m not generally one for criticizing other folks on YouTube or starting feuds. And I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think that this really, truly, genuinely sucks. And, if the Curious Refuge people take offense to my comments, all I have to say is: you shouldn’t. Because you didn’t really make those videos.”

At 34:00,

“These moments of actual innovation, the ones that create something that sticks with people for decades, can only be done by real, human creativity. AI is improving all the time but, at it’s very best, you will only ever get serviceable imitations of mediocre products.

“But the question then is: do the people in charge care about that?

“Not to point fingers, but plenty of successful, mainstream movies are merely mediocre, recycled products. If a piece of software can create that automatically, do the shareholders care about giving up the potential for an amazing masterpiece?”

No. No, they do not. They only care about their rate of return. That’s it. If you get a higher rate of return by making masterpieces, then do that. If you get a higher rate of return by training your audience to like crap because it’s cheaper and easier and more reliable to produce crap? Then do that.

I think we all know which way this is going.

At 39:00,

“The people who seem the most excited about AI are not actually the artists themselves. They are the tech bros […] who view AI art as a win over those pretentious artists and their dream is a future where it can make movies tailored to their exact specifications. Not like the shit Hollywood is making now.

“They love the idea of using AI for filmmaking because they don’t actually have any talent or skill. For them, AI is like a cheat code that allows them to seem like actual artists without doing any actual work. The moral of this story is, that AI art sucks.

“[…]

“The thing about AI art is that it isn’t really art at all. Art, by its very definition, has to express some kind of human expression. This stuff generated by an AI […] is content, something utterly disposable, something meaningless.”

Everything is Content Now by Patrick [H] Willem (YouTube)

At 19:00,

“The idea here, with YouTube’s autoplay feature, just like Twitter and Facebook’s infinite scroll, is to keep users on the platform forever, consuming an endless feed of content. The content doesn’t need to make a huge impression. We just need to keep people passively consuming it.

“Have you ever tried to take a moment and reflect on something you just watched on Netflix, only to have the end credits instantly minimized, in favor of some obnoxious ad for what to watch next?

“That’s content, baby.

“So, OK. What is my actual issue here? Like, sure, some of the culture around independently producing work for the Internet sucks, but that’s not news. […] Content means literally everything. Which means: it’s essentially meaningless. Content is everything on the Internet. And, so, it flattens everything and says it’s all the same.

“It’s saying this PhilosophyTube video—a deeply personal mixture of essay and performance art—is the same thing as this Tweet I posted about buying a new pair of pants. A short film on video is the same thing as Dwayne Johnson’s Instagram reel shilling for Zoa Energy Drinks.

“If one thing is content, it all is.

“This is like saying: a novel is the same thing as a phone call. Yes, they are both, on their most basic levels, some form of communication. But they are not the same medium and we should not treat them the same way.

“But to the executives, it is all the same. They don’t care what the content on their platforms is, so long as people are clicking, and they’re running ads on it, and it’s generating revenue, and the shareholders are happy.”

At 34:55,

“Lila Byock, a writer who worked on Watchmen and The Leftovers, is quoted saying, “What the streamers want most right now is ‘second-screen content’, where you can be on your phone while it’s on.””

Does ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Manifest the Radical Center? by Sam Husseini (Scheer Post)

Rich Men North Of Richmond by Oliver Anthony (YouTube)

He cites Oliver Anthony at length.

Philosophy & Sociology

Star Trek Gave Us a Utopian Vision of an Egalitarian, Postcapitalist Future by Simon Tyrie (Jacobin)

“Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s creator, certainly subscribed to this optimism. He believed that humanity, rather than being doomed to self-destruct, was destined to evolve out of our political myopia. It was thanks to Roddenberry that The Original Series, though dated by today’s standards, was ahead of its time with its multinational, multiethnic, and multigender crew. Famously, the show featured the first-ever televised interracial kiss (in an episode banned by the BBC ), and Martin Luther King once said that Star Trek was “the only show I and my wife Coretta will allow our three little children to stay up and watch.””

“As we learn through the introduction of the Ferengi — an alien race whose culture centers around greed and profiteering — the socialization of the replicator is a political choice. The Ferengi’s replicators are privatized, whereas replicators in the Federation are publicly owned.”

“What capitalism renders unthinkable is the politics behind technology: that developments in technology might benefit us rather than usher in further alienation.”

[…] our imagination in things technological is nearly boundless, but much less so in the ways that we can conceive of organizing society. Our system has trapped us onto a conveyor belt delivering value to a handful of elites and whispers to us that “you could be in the elite,” and “there is no alternative.”

“Star Trek provides an antithesis to how capitalism predisposes us to view technology, allowing us to imagine what society might look like if technology were used purely for improving our quality of life. Instead of following this path, the morsels of convenience we’ve received through technological advancements are only enough to numb us to the realization that we’ve become locked into a cycle of consumerism and surveillance capitalism.”

It does apply in this way, but only to those who can afford it. The rest suffer from actual need or instilled want.

“Instead of the show’s drama revolving around interpersonal conflict, problems are overcome through teamwork, and very rarely as the result of one person’s heroism. It’s one of the most unique aspects of the show; as viewers, we’ve come to expect conflict between characters to be one of the most fundamental aspects of drama.”

And it’s tedious to constantly watch people bitching at each other, undercutting each other, striving for more than anyone needs….

“Star Trek continuously offers examples of cooperation, conflict resolution, kindness, and empathy that are in short supply in most modern dramas.”

“we all, naturally, struggle to imagine an alternative way of living. We all live under the same political system that snuffs out any threats to its existence by design, and it becomes harder to imagine an alternative each day that this system entrenches itself deeper into our lives.”

Santísimo Sacramento by Justin Smith-Ruiu (Hinternet)

“Leaving aside for now the merits on each side of the debate, or whether elementary-school library shelves really need how-to guides for the application of lubricant, we may at least regret what appears to be the total loss in our present century of Sigmund Freud as a cultural touchstone.”

“For everything he got wrong, Freud and his second-gen acolytes (Melanie Klein et al.) were perhaps the last major theorists to take childhood seriously, to truly strive to recall what it is actually like to be a child. And what it is like, if I recall correctly, and if Freud is at all right on this point, is that it is a period of near-constant pullulations of unbelievable perversity, when desire is so all-consuming —even if we don’t yet understand it and even if the bodily locus of its greatest intensity is not yet settled— as to cause our developing minds to represent even topographical features of our inanimate urban landscapes as the sites of an almost infinite erotic charge, as mysterious places transfigured by their innate paraphiliac powers.”

“[…] the State Fair is on right now: nightly demolition derbies, amusement rides adorned with airbrushed art of Freddy Krueger, the heroine from Frozen, and what appears to be Kurt Cobain; contests of luck or strength for which you might once have won a mirror adorned with The Rolling Stones’ lips-and-tongue logo, or perhaps some artifact honoring Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, but now you can at best hope for some animé-inspired plush toy, or a miniature effigy of Bob Ross, who, like Davy Crockett or Johnny Appleseed before him, seems barely to have been a man at all, but has by now ascended into the pantheon of our culture’s divinities. Over in those giant hangars there are the 4H kids with their prize-winning livestock; and the Isley Brothers are playing tonight too, or what’s left of them.”

“[…] the old Iceland skating rink would have appeared on the right, but otherwise all the iconic art-deco diners and furniture showrooms will have been replaced by Dollar General outlets, or only by empty lots;”

“This is cognition in the wild, as you might find in the mind of a Micronesian outrigger pilot or a London taxi-driver who has demonstrated his possession of “ The Knowledge ”: navigation of an environment where the external markers of place are at the same time internal markers of one’s own motion through time.”

“[…] my changing positions in space are experienced as motions through a sort of 3D read-out of the contents of my own mind and memory.”

“[…] back then we all knew exactly how fast you could take the curves on Winding, and we shared tales with one another of other kids who took them just a little bit faster, and lived, or a little bit faster than that, and did not.”

“Is this suburban California idyll of mine, this summer of great atavism, at all appropriate to my age and station? If not, why does it feel so good and natural?”

You think too much. My so-called atavistic sojourn on the other coast went just fine, with far less soul-searching and guilt.

“[…] the debt is infinite, as David Graeber discerned , and cannot be repaid. This impossibility, under normal circumstances, practically guarantees that whenever an adult child returns home under some vague pretense of repayment he will find himself lapsing back into a familiar and fixed intergenerational dynamic that already carved its groove a half-century ago.”

Absolutely not necessarily. Dad and I are friends, more than anything else.

“I like to go to the salad bar at our Whole Foods on Arden Way, to choose exactly as much as I want of each of their many items, their edamame, their asparagus, their quinoa, and then to proceed to the self-checkout counters, and to eat by myself, with biodegradable cutlery, at one of their little tables”

Christ no. I like the unexpected delight of “That little Place on Main” in Little Falls. Fuck everything about the Whole Foods salad bar on disposable plateware.

Why Can’t You and I Get Rich Quick? by Freddie DeBoer (SubStack)

“One of Raj Chetty’s papers found that, as 538 summarized, “rich kids stay rich, poor kids stay poor.” According to a 2019 Georgetown study, discussed here by CNBC”

“… a kindergarten student from the bottom 25% of socioeconomic status with test scores from the top 25% of students has a 31% chance of earning a college education and working a job that pays at least $35,000 by the time they are 25, and at least $45,000 by the time they are 35.

“A kindergarten student from the top 25% of socioeconomic status with test scores from the bottom 25% of students had a 71% chance of achieving the same milestones.”

“[…] two-thirds of various tax subsidies related to homeownership and retirement go to the top 20 percent of earners, which means that public policy helps families who already have wealth pass that wealth on to their children.”

As I’ve always said: no form of libertarianism can provide justice because we all have different starting lines. In the U.S., social mobility is the carrot hanging from the stick mounted to the back of your head. It dangles tantalizingly, but you’ll almost certainly never reach it.

“[…] many millions of people are capable of holding down mid-level miscellaneous admin jobs for big corporations. For those of you who are among them, the surest path to being “rich” is to get a college degree, get the best job you can, be willing to switch jobs to get a better salary, and religiously stick money in an index fund that you never touch. If you do that, you can very realistically retire, even retire a little early, with seven figures. You need the discipline to not live beyond your means, and you need to not try and beat the market by being a typical deluded retail investor, but this is all readily achievable for, let’s say, 80% of the population.”

80%!?! That is absolutely not true. 80% of a specific cohort, maybe, but getting a college education and getting a job that is “PMC” (Professional Managerial Class) is not feasible for 80% of the population. Can you imagine? Most of the population occupied doing useless PMC stuff? Who’s going to build the underpinnings of society? Who’s going to make sure that water and sewage and electric are working? Oh, yeah, those people. I’m kind of shocked that de Boer wrote that figure. He’s usually more tuned in than that. And it’s amazing to think that our society only even thinks of providing a secure life with a secure and happy retirement to people whose utility to society is questionable—or, at least, debatable. It’s like your the degree of security, comfort, and happiness that you can look forward to is inversely proportional to the utility you provide.

“The trouble is that a ceiling of, say, a couple million is not what a lot of people think of as rich, and by the time you get that amount you’re like 55 at the youngest, more realistically 60 or 65, and the kind of people who want to get rich want to do so while they’re young. So the plan of making your money by earning a wage from a more-or-less regular job is out.”

The post continues, but I’m not subscribed, but I’m not super-interested in where it’s going now. People who want to get rich young are even more useless and obnoxious than others. I’m sure the discussion won’t include a discussion of what it means to be “rich”. Rich in what? Experience? Happiness? Friends? Or just money? Is that the sole goal of a member of society? To amass as much money as possible and then buy as much happiness as they can with it? Regardless of how much unhappiness their endeavors bring to others? Just looking out for #1?

Technology

Zoom Can Spy on Your Calls and Use the Conversation to Train AI, But Says That It Won’t by Bruce Schneier

“[…] these are Terms of Service. They can change at any time. Zoom can renege on its promise at any time. There are no rules, only the whims of the company as it tries to maximize its profits.

“It’s a stupid way to run a technological revolution. We should not have to rely on the benevolence of for-profit corporations to protect our rights. It’s not their job, and it shouldn’t be.”

Inside the AI Porn Marketplace Where Everything and Everyone Is for Sale by Samantha Cole (404 Media)

“An AI porn singularity has already occurred, an explosion of non-consensual sexual imagery that’s seeping out of every crack of internet infrastructure if you only care to look, and we’re all caught up in it. Celebrities big and small and normal people. Images of our faces and bodies are fueling a new type of pornography in which humans are only a memory that’s copied and remixed to instantly generate whatever sexual image a user can describe with words.”

There is nothing you can do about any of this. It’s free speech. I would be free to write erotica describing a person involved in whatever salacious acts my mind could conceive. Just because a mechanism exists to transform that into images—and will probably soon exist to generate convincing video—doesn’t change the basic fact that I can generate this stuff. I’m not sure what the legal implications are for distributing this material, or for profiting from it. You’re using someone’s likeness to make money for yourself, without them benefitting in any way, which is probably illegal. That you’re creating content that makes it look like someone has made pornography is only a temporary problem, I think. Soon, people will just accept that most pornography is not real, and go about their days. It’s possible, though, that the knee-jerk reaction of the wetware we all carry will still negatively predispose you to someone of whom you’ve seen pornography—even if you know it’s fake.

‘Changes to U.K. Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law’ by John Gruber (Daring Fireball)

“[…] the notion that security updates, for every user in the world, would need the approval of the U.K. Home Office just to make sure the patches weren’t closing vulnerabilities that the government itself is exploiting — it boggles the mind. Even if the U.K. were the only country in the world to pass such a law, it would be madness, but what happens when other countries follow?”

Isn’t this what already happens in the U.S. 🇺🇸 ? Or China 🇨🇳 ? Maybe this is the first time that a bit player like the UK is attempting to influence a sphere larger than its own technology sector.

Programming

All Estimations Are Wrong, But None Are Useful by Dr. Milan Milanović (Tech World With Milan Newsletter)

I found these to be quite interesting and relevant:

1. 𝗛𝗼𝗳𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗱𝘁𝗲𝗿’𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝘄: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.” It highlights the recursive nature of estimation, where considering the complexity of a task and human optimism often leads to underestimation.
2. 𝗕𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗸’𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝘄: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” This law emphasizes the negative impact of increasing team size to speed up a project. New team members need time to get up to speed, and overhead communication increases, further delaying the project.
3. 𝗕𝗶𝗸𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: This law states that people tend to focus on trivial details rather than critical aspects of a project. In software estimation, this can result in an overemphasis on understandable tasks while underestimating more complex tasks.
4. 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗻’𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝘄: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” This law suggests that if a deadline is too generous, developers may spend more time on a task than necessary, leading to inefficiencies and delays.
5. 𝗡𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘆-𝗡𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲: “The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time; the remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.” This rule highlights the difficulty of accurately estimating the time needed for bug fixing, optimization, and polishing.

“[…] we found that jobs estimated up to 3 days of work are accurate.”

In the end, there are no shortcuts. Be aware of these traps, break down tasks, be aware that your estimates are estimates, and hope for the best. Work toward your MVP. Be ruthless about what’s required for the MVP. Get your fallback in place, and work iteratively to improve it. Failure to complete any of these later, improvement stages will still leave you with either your MVP or the MVP plus whichever improvement stages you’ve managed to finish by your deadline.

Releasing Features the Smart Way in .NET by Nick Chapsas (YouTube)

A twisted tale of memory optimization by Oren Eini

“This will not allocate, but if you note the changes in the code, you can see that the use of var in this case really tripped me up. Because of the number of overloads and automatic coercion of types that didn’t happen.”

Enhance vs. Lit vs. WebC…or, How to Server-Render a Web Component by Jared White (The Spicy Web)

“In server-rendered applications, most logic lives elsewhere. Controllers or routes pull content from databases and handle requests, models or entities encapsulate records, and you can easily write functions or PO(X)Os (Plain Old Ruby / JavaScript / Python / etc. Objects) to mange all sorts of business logic. The view layer only has to provide a base level of smarts to take a data structure defined elsewhere and translate it into markup.

“It’s only in the so-called “modern” world of SPAs where components have fast expanded like a virus to take over the bulk of application architecture. You’re fetching data from APIs and handling forms and validating datfffa and executing business logic all from view-layer components. It’s nothing but another form of big ball of mud software architecture.”

Fun

Remy: Rich Men North of Richmond (Federal Employee Version) by ReasonTV (YouTube)

Actual watches for adults in a Wal-Mart

Video Games

You’re the OS is a game that will make you feel for your poor, overworked system by Kevin Purdy (Ars Technica)

“You have four CPU slots by default (adjustable in-game settings), so you click processes to move them into a CPU and work them. The processes are green and smiley when they appear, then degrade to orange, red, deep red, and then red and freezing as you ignore them for other processes. Working each process also takes up memory pages in memory, and filling up your allotment can move memory pages to disk, from which a process really does not want to work. And then sometimes processes are frozen until you click a little button to handle “I/O Events.”

“What this looks like when you’re actually playing is pure triage, scanning and clicking and sacrificing processes you think can last just a bit longer while you deal with other stuff. Do you click the I/O Events button and wait to see if it unlocks that red process in your CPU core, or immediately dump the locked process in favor of something else deserving? It’s your job to answer this question because, well, you’re the OS.”