every empire that rises will fall. but that’s little solace within a lifetime.

@cocoaphony Right. Just like cruise missiles and nukes were unforeseen and unaddressed in 2A, speech by and for vast-scale corporate entities, national/global scale broadcast networks, communications-network-effect captured by a single firm, would all have been inconceivable and unaddressed when 1A was penned. (With broadcast networks we got temporarily lucky, we could pretend we were regulating “public airwaves” rather than speech.)

@grayface_ghost I think this underestimates the degree to which US support of Israel is a demonstration to Arab security allies (whose publics support Palestinian resistance but whose leaders see in Hamas parallels with their own domestic rivals, whose help in suppressing they expect of a security vendor/partner). I don’t think it’s race or Eurochauvinism. Some of it is arms selling, but most is geopolitics. The US doesn’t want to cede its oil-rich allies to “more reliable” partners.

@cocoaphony Yes!

One way to characterize the case you are making is that anti-trust always WAS speech regulation.

Does it count as “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”? If you are Elon, you say preventing him from doing what he wants with his platform is that. Is preventing, or undoing, the emergence of Twitter, specifically for its effect on a “marketplace of ideas”, then “abridging” as well? 1/

@cocoaphony Whether it is or not, I’m for it. Just like I don’t think private parties have a right to keep or bear cruise missiles.

So should we interpret into freedom of speech a kind of limitation of reach, i.e. a right to speak is fully protected as long as any amplification comes from voluntary action by other speakers, but the degree a party may be capable of unilateral amplification might be regulable? /fin

in reply to self

@cocoaphony but aren’t the issues with monopoly-ish speech lots different than Standard Oil? Standard Oil can raise power muscle out competitors. monopolists who control the public’s attention can sabotage the deliberation that would let the public address Standard Oil, and a whole, large, range of problems. (the analogy between speech and a consumer product of any sort seems pretty tenuous to me.)

good or bad analogy?

facebook/twitter/etc is to 18th C newspapers and pamphlets (1st Amendment) like cruise missiles are to 18th C muskets (2nd Amendment).

private monopoly: no exit, no voice.

we need fucked-checkers who check if we are well and truly fucked, and very often debunk the claim.

you’ve made it, but what have you made?

my guru Spam Risk phones occasionally. i pick up, say hello. he responds with

Silence.

always, he is teaching me.

shareholder value is everybody else’s cost.

perhaps this first-order cost is offset by innovation that serves consumers or society at large (rather than merely shareholders, as a lot of business-model, supply-chain, and legal innovation does).

but that’s an affirmative case to make, likely dependent upon institutional details. it’s not an easy case to make these past few decades.

@akkartik there’s been a lot of coconut talk lately, but we’ve forgotten it’s very best uses…

when you’re living in Camelot
it’s easy to forget
those who don’t have a lot.

“Stephen Colbert, unforgettably, labeled Republicans’ habit of uttering things that feel emotionally true, even though they are made up, as ‘truthiness.’ The Democrats had their own, photo-negative version of truthiness: utterances that are meticulously factual, but that convey an unmistakable emotional falsiness.” @Rickperlstein prospect.org/politics/2024-08- ht @ddayen

@mattlehrer “American flag ear diaper”. Sure!

Also brat. Can’t believe I omitted that.

Icons of this campaign season, so far:

1) Van Gogh fist-pump
2) Joy
3) Gus
4) Couch

@marick Thanks! Oddly, I’ve gotten very little feedback on this one. Who knew tax policy details might not be a crowd pleaser?

“I remember talking on the playground with kids in the fourth grade about how we hoped we died quickly when we were nuked, as who would want to live after that? That’s not a normal thing for nine-year-olds to talk about, don’t you think?” technologyasnature.com/2024/08

// basically my experience as well. i had a persistent “fear-tasy” in which my whole family would be huddled in the basement before we would be transformed into a silhouette on the wall. at least we would be together.

trying desperately to undo what he has done to himself, Trump will soon announce he supports abortions until age three.

fraud fraud is when you fraudulently allege a fraud that in actual fact was not fraudulent.