Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i just try to write it!

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

"Being an Apple customer is like being in a 24/7 BDSM relationship…without a safe-word. Maybe you like the control Apple exerts over your life most of the time, but if they ever start to hurt you, there's no way to make them stop" ~Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net/2025/09/28/w...

Pluralistic: Plenty of room at the bottom (of the tech stack) (29 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

image/meme-based communication may be something quite different, i don't know. short-form video is also something distinct, but does seem closer to classical orality and gossip, although the differences may matter too.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

we can just lord it over them into our nineties then.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

maybe!

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

maybe we as a society decide we don’t want increased orality. maybe we put our thumb on the scale in a variety of ways for an internet of text.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

nevah!

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

the process of persuasion between now and then would likely be ungentle.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

have you brought any gold statuettes to my office?

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

only on toast!

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

the ethnonational reaction to liberalism, a backlash to the sense that important, protective, culturally important identities are dissolved under atomistic liberalism, will eventually occasion recourse to a more aggressively identity-undermining liberalism as the only way out of cycles of vengeance.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i’m imposing a 100% tariffs on your posts.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

the miracle i want from a medbed is just a good night’s sleep.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

would you really prefer an immoral panic?

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

am i the only one who worried for a moment that ICE was coming for this guy? youtu.be/ZcJjMnHoIBI

untitled link

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

(i read the jasmine sun piece as very anthropological, explaining but from a distance.)

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i feel like we are all, on every side, living through our villain origin stories.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

“Neo-hustle-culture is a modern twist on Weber’s Protestant ethic: if the world is soon to be divided into the blessed and the damned, the techno-kings and the techno-peasants, anxious technologists should work as hard as they can to prove they deserve to end up on the right side of that divide.”

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

( excerpt from the excellent quoted piece, by @jasmine.bsky.social )

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

sometimes people say “citizens” when what they mean is “subjects”.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

but if you are openly instrumental about what and how you choose to speak, that instrumentalism is what you will project, untrustworthiness. of course you want to be appealing and not divide your own coalition. 1/

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

the art, though, is to find a way to be that is appealing that people understand as reflecting stable commitments they can understand, share, or condemn. if you are protean, a schmoo (dating myself) your “messaging” is meaningless, unworthy even of evaluating. /fin

in reply to self