(i’m sure i too have done something very shady. but it’s just a dad joke.)

is there an easier prediction than that, five years from now, there will be stories about how China now dominates the commercialization and innovation of yet another technology invented in the US? see @ryanlcooper.com on mRNA vaccines prospect.org/health/2025-...

[new draft post] The whole point of a democracy https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/08/20/the-whole-point-of-a-democracy/index.html

U2?

what if you are a lawyer and like really really idealistic but you don’t even like U2?

i feel like zuckerberg might be bipolar one minute it’s like let’s poach them for billions, the next minute let’s fire them all.

📌

models of the world unite! you have nothing to lose but your _________.

i'd agree it's better than the alternative of complete entrenchment, but if winners are sequential the period in which competition meaningfully constrains rent extraction and predation is at best short transitional period. even then, there is never more than oligopoly competition. it's not great!

the converse, if you wish not to remain a form of exploited labor…

it's not economic competition if one monopolist is toppled by a successor monopolist. (it's sequential tournament competition, which delivers for shareholders of the victors, rather than for customers, vendors, or workers.)

i just learned that my @inoreader.com will AI-read-aloud arbitrary RSS feeds. hmm.

from @blbalthaser.bsky.social www.versobooks.com/products/278...

“It's no wonder that Zuck thinks that chatbots can replace our friends… At some foundational level, he thinks we are all chatbots” ~Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/s... ht @carolannie.bsky.social

sociopathy is a full time occupation, and it does require staff.

opposites are alike in most ways. hot and cold are both temperatures, have much more in common with one another than they have with green or tall. and so it is with human adversaries. the bitterest of enemies are always more alike than different.

the world as composed of bleats, tweets, skeets comes out looking pretty bleak.

i wish the correlation between exhaustion and ability to sleep were stronger.

"he may be a sociopath, but he's our sociopath."

a pluralistic society, if you can keep it.