Google's job is not to serve revenue. It's to serve relevance. What a bizarre way to put it, if Google does not corrupt its product — vis a vis its own stated ideals when it introduced its product! — that would be a "conspiracy" against those who best pay them off? 1/
Maybe Google's motivation here is purely financial, not political. But that is not exonerative at all. The political can exert extraordinary control over the financial incentives of large firms. Would CBS not paying off Trump then be a conspiracy against him? Not a great way of putting things. /fin
The way Google prioritizes links to TV stories when I search for newsy things has my conspiratorial dander up. TV news is the medium most susceptible to capture and control. Google, instead of linking to the text-based web—the medium most open to diverse viewpoints—privileges what can be controlled.
i guess i don’t see us very close to anything like that, and even in theory only we humans know our own values and interests, a well designed information system can help us but not replace our role. 1/
that doesn’t mean there are no alternatives to status quo representative democracy ( see eg www.interfluidity.com/v2/9069.html ), but it does mean some kind of system in which we have an active role. /fin
i mean, they're nice people when you chat at the kids' soccer game.
i'm really a single issue voter at this point: electoral reform. if we don't "break the two-party doom loop', as @leedrutman.bsky.social put it, it's hard to see how we don't escalate to killing each other even more than we are, let alone get any kind of sane and sensible governance.
It's surprising to me how large a fraction of prominent political violence (or violence that becomes very political ex post) has occurred in Minneapolis, a place I generally think of as very safe and civilized.
if we’re going to start throwing around accusations of “stochastic terrorism”…
Loading quoted Bluesky post...
we mock their reasoning. the supreme court blesses it.
the future of media is digital samizdat.
i just had a call from a very polite gentleman running for state house in a state not mine, seeking a donation. good luck to him, but it’s getting a bit ridiculous.
I won’t disagree — at some level questions about what is fake vs real in a person are beyond me, my orientation is very behaviorist — but even if so, that won’t prevent those so inclined to see the bonhomie and ostentatious good will and miss the rest.
i never interpreted that so literally!
in 2016 i was a “class reductionist” and what now gets called the radical center was all-in on identity progressivism, scolding us. now i feel quite a bit more identity-progressive than they have become. although i think my values haven’t changed, tried to balance caution and decency then and now.
one thing to say about Charlie Kirk is he had enormous emotional range. he could project — very effectively! — reasonableness, bonhomie, good will, even across deep social chasms. he could also spew bile, hatred, and bigotry in a way that left little doubt he meant it. 1/
this range renders him extraordinarily divisive. some communities will select to portray and remember him through (videoclips of) extraordinary openness and good will extended to putative adversaries. others will recall the crushing epithets and hatefulness. 2/
each will feel righteous speaking and acting in ways the other finds deplorable, unforgivable. 3/
there are few public figures whose murder could be so effective a fuse. /fin
but a lot more intricate and demanding i think at microscale!
at that scale, it doesn’t seem quite as craft-y or neurotic.
is bullet engraving like a common hobby in real america, just a thing people do?
in general, “money is defined by the unit of account in which people borrow and contract future obligations” is a pretty good rule.
Loading quoted Bluesky post...
should lower court defiance of this supreme court be overt, loud and proud, or disguised behind technicalities and fine parsings?