Pluralistic: Union pensions are funding private equity attacks on workers (05 Oct 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Society
Political Disinformation and AI - Schneier on Security
Depression, Anxiety, ADHD, and so on Are on the Rise Because Modern Work Is (Mostly) Bullshit
My experiences and struggles with the corporate world and what I learned about myself. How to be happy when not fitting in.
Pacific telco backed by Australia, Japan, US bins Huawei
Nokia looks a more diplomatic choice at Digicel
The First Birth Control Handbook, Written by a Group of Teenagers in 1968
The First Birth Control Handbook, Written by a Group of Teenagers in 1968 - Uncategorized - Messy Nessy Chic
Pluralistic: For 40 years, Big Meat has openly colluded to rig prices (04 Oct 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Lessons unearthed from the Northwest’s little-known histories
While digging into volcanic eruptions and grizzly bears, Mossback’s Northwest host Knute Berger found that the past has a lot to say.
How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet
Testimony during Google’s antitrust case revealed that the company may be altering billions of queries a day to generate results that will get you to buy more stuff.
How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory
To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon.
Data Is the New Oil of the Digital Economy
Data in the 21st Century is like Oil in the 18th Century: an immensely, untapped valuable asset. Like oil, for those who see Data’s fundamental value and learn to extract and use it there will be huge rewards. We’re in a digital economy where data is more valuable than ever. It’s the key to the…
You may have heard data is the new oil. It's not
Treating data like a commodity has led some governments to hoard it in silos, locked behind borders. The result: dwindling economic and social benefits.
The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data
The data economy demands a new approach to antitrust rules
How to debase the coinage in order to pay for wars
Henry VIII, after Hans Holbein the Younger It's fun to imagine traveling back in time and engaging with the then-prevailing technologies. Wo...
Under-appreciated existential threats of AI: drinking water.
Do you want Immortan Joes? Because this is how you get Immortan Joes. One thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water: In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022, to nearly 1.7 billion gallons [...] "It's fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI," including "its heavy ...
I Have Discovered That Giving Up on the World Can Set You Free
I am tired. Exhausted from struggling and imagining a better world. I have given up, in a way. Yet I am cheery.
Could a third party save America?
Voters deserve far better than the decrepit Democrats and Republicans.
Pluralistic: Google’s enshittification memos (03 Oct 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
To redesign democracy, the U.S. should borrow an idea from Dublin
Citizens’ Assemblies convene people from all walks of life to deal with tough political questions like abortion and climate policy
Creative jobs have a passion trap problem
Passion is a state of mind that can't be objectively measured, yet many bosses believe they can spot a passionate employee.
Work From Home Works - Marginal REVOLUTION
It took firms decades to adjust to electricity by redesigning factories, products, and workflows to take full advantage of the new possibilities. Similarly, the benefits of work from home start to come most profoundly when expensive offices can be shrunk, employers can draw from a much larger pool of workers and workers can adjust when […]
Mina Hsiang helped save Healthcare.gov a decade ago. Today she’s rewriting the government tech playbook
U.S. Digital Service Chief Mina Hsiang on how government’s IT has—and hasn’t changed since the Obamacare website mess
Won’t Somebody Think of the Poor Taxpaying Landlords?
At Reason (“Did NYC Just Kneecap Airbnb?”), Liz Wolfe seems to be diversifying beyond her normal focus on tech platform apologetics and crowding onto the turf of resident landlord whisperer Christian Britschgi. I confess my first reading of the title brought a smile to my face — probably not the effect Wolfe intended — as...
MAGA Attacks On Cities Are Not Working
Former president Donald Trump's infamous photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, June 1, 2020. The photo op wa...
Biblical city of Sodom was possibly destroyed by an asteroid | Boing Boing
According to the Bible, God punished the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah by obliterating the city. “Fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all,” so says the scripture. That…
DOJ finally posted that “embarrassing” court doc Google wanted to hide
Google exec said users get hooked on search engine like “cigarettes or drugs.”
Meta in Myanmar, Part II: The Crisis - Erin Kissane's small internet website
This is the second post in a series on what Meta did in Myanmar and what the broader technology community can learn from it. It will make a lot more
The Origins of the Socialist Slur
Reconstruction-era opponents of racial equality popularized the charge that protecting civil rights would amount to the end of capitalism.
Trump paints 2024 campaign as ‘righteous crusade’ as he rallies evangelicals
Former President Trump during a speech on Saturday depicted the U.S. as a “beloved nation” that is “teetering on the edge of tyranny” and painted his 2024 presidential campa…
Against Voltaire, or, the shortest possible introduction to the Holy Roman Empire
Long time readers of the blog will remember that I have written, a couple of times, about the Holy Roman Empire in the past before. There’s a few reasons for this – first of all the HRE goes so har…
Opinion | Amazon Is the Apex Predator of Our Platform Era
Why Lina Khan and the F.T.C. must prevail in their long-awaited lawsuit against Amazon.