“getting rid of anticircumvention laws only requires that governments control their own behavior – unlike taxing or fining companies, which only works if governments can control the behavior of companies that have proven, time and again, to be more powerful than any country in the world.” @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/01/redistribution-vs-predistribution/#elbows-up-eurostack

"The problem with AI coding isn't technical debt. It's comprehension debt." #PaulSangleFerriere https://www.cubic.dev/blog/the-real-problem-with-ai-coding

if you want a manhattan project pursuing life extension, persuade your rulers — so that they really believe it — that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell.

if your theory of politics requires as “discipline” that people can not publicly say what they actually believe, what kind of theory of politics is that? what is its relationship to democracy in any meaningful or substantive sense?

Given what is happening to CBS News, I'l re-up this… https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/03/09/voice-of-a-maryland/index.html

there should be a whole genre of sloppish AI videos for Talking Heads’ “Television man”

🎵And everything is real / Do I like the WAYYY I feel. 🎵

@carolannie ( i’ve mixed feelings about their CEO… https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/ )

Any VPN recommendations?

(the main motivation is to present as a US client while overseas, for a whole family’s devices, i’d like someone i don’t feel shitty to do business with.)

Stein’s Law is the law now in America.

This is excellent, by #LeeDrutman

(i think the piece suggests fusion voting would not do enough more than that it’s a particularly hopeful way forward. but the analysis of where we are, and how futile much of our factionalizing is, has never been presented more clearly.)

https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-moderation-debate-fiddles-with

ht @ryanlcooper

you used to have to change the clocks, but now it’s like a treasure hunt to find a clock that hasn’t changed itself.

concentrating our forces off Venezuela and Nigeria will ensure our critical national security interests are protected.

This post does not exist.

if you’ve written for a long time, you have to hope you don’t become a stereotype of yourself. it’s not an easy thing to avoid.

boo, y'all!

isn't he doing to grok what they did to HAL 9000?

if you believe that a better world is possible, you may be tarred as a doomer, because achieving a better world involves calling attention to what is wrong with this one.

your very optimism is called pessimism, particularly by people for whom the current world is more than comfortable.

@Alon A smart US would not. But a man always desperate to be able to brag about a “good deal”, who welcomes the hatred of the virtuous and pious, might make a trade!

Anyone else think the nuclear announcement is a concession that Xi requested?

The timing is... suspicious.

China is the nuclear laggard of the three apocalyptopowers. It wants to catch up, and has the technical and industrial means to do so, but it probably needs to test its new tech. However, it's invested a lot in portraying itself as good guy to America's putative evil empire.

The US' negotiating position vis China is objectively bad, but people can find creative… sweeteners.

i get knocked down / but i get up again / but not without throwing a huge temper tantrum and acting bitter and depressed for days and you're never gonna keep me down!