someone asked on redbook about Americans’ view of Elon Musk (and his mom), and it’s fun to see the infosphere clash, the Americans mostly dissing him while Chinese people note that he is widely admired there. http://xhslink.com/a/8xIo5fp1I343
what if China does to the next American election what Elon Musk did to the last one?
i love it when i click on a thing and get a message like the thing you clicked on does not exist. like what does existence even mean?
Screenshot fromX/Twitter: Title: Rate a note Text: This note does not exist.
in magic, words structure reality, so the easiest thing to transform a chemist into is a chemise.
it’s touching to see Donald Trump make such an effort to prove Gary Gensler right.
if a President issues a shitcoin, even though it may bear all the hallmarks of a classic pump and dump, one must consider the possibility it’s intended as a durable means of deniable bribery.
so many people into eugenics wouldn't make their own cut.
@BillySmith just in how bleak he has become?
"Multimember proportional elections can be implemented at the state level without going through the federal government." @sjshancoxli https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-crisis-of-democratic-governance/
[Zuckerberg] “not only did his big set of moderation changes to please Trump, but did so only after he was told by the incoming administration to act. Even worse, he reportedly made sure to share his plans with top Trump aides to get their approval first.” @mmasnick https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/17/as-zuckerberg-goes-around-whining-about-biden-he-made-sure-to-first-get-his-new-approach-approved-by-trump/
cynicism is not a sufficient epistemology.
don’t initial here for ordinary matters.
a digital signature pad labeled “FOR EPIC USE ONLY”
playing around on redbook, it is all welcomes and smiles and cordial mutual curiosity. until someone asked about israel and, hooboy, that got ugly fast.
i’m rednote curious, prefer using a Chinese app to a Musk, Meta, or Google product.
i’ve no illusions about China’s government. but Elon and our homegrown tech oligarchs are a more proximate threat to my own political community.
i’d prefer a fediverse or atproto alternative obviously!
is “influencer” a legitimate and desirable role in the economy that public policy should support and protect?
"the actual threats came from the GOP, to which Zuckerberg quickly caved. The supposed threats from the Biden admin were overhyped, exaggerated, and misrepresented, and Zuck directly admits he was able to easily refuse those requests… All the rest is noise." @mmasnick https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/16/rogan-misses-the-mark-how-zucks-misdirection-on-govt-pressure-goes-unchallenged/
"Is Xiaohongshu TikTok Two?"
(Sorry.)
I can't believe I've never encountered Michael O. Church.
Via @BillySmith, I read his remarkable 2012 taxonomy of three distinct "ladders" of social class, within which sit 13 social classes. It's perceptive and useful and filled with trenchant social commentary. And accessible only via the Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20180528153508/http://sasamat.xen.prgmr.com/michaelochurch/wp/2012/09/10/the-3-ladder-system-of-social-class-in-the-u-s/ 1/
In 2021, he revisited the issue: "Marx was right. If there are stable social classes, there are exactly two of them." His 2021 worldview is darker, sadder, and rings too true. https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2021/01/28/a-reply-to-alex-danco-revisiting-macleod-and-the-three-ladders-in-the-wake-of-trump/
They're long! I recommend reading them both. /fin
@_dm ironically, the founders didn’t mean for a two-party system emerging, and nothing in the Constitution constrains us to the electoral system that causes it to emerge…
@_dm it’s a problem of collective epistemology. it would be via trusted representation, likely mediated by participatory political parties that closely reflect voters’ values and interests that (1) could become true. under two massive political parties and “representation” (often anti-representation) as one representative for 760,000, no (1) will not hold. 1/
@_dm until we restructure to a form of democracy able to think coherently, we’re left with (2), delivering tangible, material benefits within a tightly compressed electoral time frame, front-loading benefits perhaps inefficiently, choosing fast tricks like sending checks over forms of public investment that take time to ripen. 2/
@_dm Democrats, a party dominated by people who style themselves expert, good-government professionals, are particular bad at (2). if “the right thing” would be a Gantt Chart stretching forward several years, of course we’re not going to just hand out quick goodies, in addition or instead. that would be, like, corrupt machine politics! So they feel virtuous and blame the public and lose.
We really need electoral reform to resuscitate (1). /fin