Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
for now we have achieved Artificial Colonel Intelligence.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i also hope they don’t go there.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
maybe. i fear Trump stratifies the world by money, though, so Musk will be the influence he instinctually follows.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it’s a scary time. but the connections between Trump, when he talks about immigrants as vermin or poisoning the blood, or Musk when he gets into replacement theory, and fascism are undeniable. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
that doesn’t mean they’ll go to the horrible extremes of the actual Nazis. the actual Nazis took years and entanglement in a bitter war to get to those extremes. it does mean there’s a dangerous slope we have to worry about. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
@zkat.tech "(or just a small shell script)" is my favorite parenthetical in a long while.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Trump started the policy shift against big tech they are so mad about! Biden (Kanter and Khan really just competently ran with his balls!) 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
But Trump is transactional. They bought him off. Progressives actually believe their own line, once they were persuaded tech was a problem (antitrust, misinformation, plutocracy), they can’t be bought. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
For Trump its no problem to be against TikTok, then for it, against crypto, then for it, against Facebook, then for it, against Section 230, then, well, we’ll see. 3/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Musk and Yass bought Trump. It’s as simple as that. In 2016, Thiel became a prominent supporter, tech oligarchs shunned him. Now they’ve competed to bend the knee, to Trump and very explicitly to Musk. Bezos killed the WaPo Harris endorsement and talks up Musk’s supposed integrity. 4/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Musk has not only gone Trump, he’s gone Nazi. Andreeson too. Have tech oligarchs shunned him like they shunned Thiel in 2016? Can you name one? Is Apple pulling their ads from X again? 5/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I’m sorry. It’s the world’s most upscale Nazi bar. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
one way to overcome deflation without going "welfarist" in the way Xi (misguidedly) fears would be to fix this, and finance decent public health care. healthy people who need money for food are the best workers! subsidizing high quality medical care for all would make a sizable economic stimulus!
Loading quoted Bluesky post...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
history proves that while technological change does eliminate some traditional jobs, new, better, more productive jobs always emerge in the aftermath. for example, for every job AI destroys, two new jobs will be created in the guard labor sector.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
🙁
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it’s such a fun dance and you don’t even have to be any good at dancing!
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
we’d all welcome them into a more accepting community with open arms, as long their self acceptance overcomes the free floating loathing that seems to motivate much of their current political affiliation.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they’re so into this song in particular, i wonder whether that’s despite or because or in complete ignorance of the subtext of the lyric?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(thanks!)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
two Senators for zero population will be really disproportionate.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
the solution to a hair-trigger abuser isn’t to tiptoe gently. democracy isn’t a binary, we are worse than we were but still better than we could be. eliminating the disproportionate power of this particular group of people, “tech”, is a big part of the proximate struggle to move forward. go hard.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
[tech notebook] Syndicating RSS to Mastodon and BlueSky with feedletter https://tech.interfluidity.com/2025/01/14/syndicating-rss-to-mastodon-and-bluesky-with-feedletter/index.html
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Drum lives in Irvine. He's not a Bay Area mega-NIMBY. I think it's true Ds went after tech differently. But so did Rs. Under Trump is where tech antitrust began. Trump disliked crypto his first term. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Previously, both parties were friendly to Big Tech, and since Clinton, to money generally. Under Biden Ds began gently reverting towards a more egalitarian, New Deal liberalism, Republicans stayed "pro business", Trump sold tech his support, and that was enough for the industry to go Nazi. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Gates is and always has been an IP maximalist, a position as conservative as they come. It's that Democrats at the time weren't challenging material conservatism, only social conservatism, that let Gates remain a Democratic and lets you describe him as liberal. 3/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Tech was willing to be liberal when liberalism was about sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. As soon as liberalism began to demand competitive industry structures and revisit material obligations towards anything like a just and cohesive society, it went Nazi. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
just don’t say “they”.