Pluralistic: Algorithmic feeds are a twiddler’s playground (11 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Society
Waltersobchakeit: A German Word That Isn't German
The word Waltersobchakeit looks and sounds German, but it's entirely made up. Read more here about where it came from, and why it sounds so German!
We Have to Save Online Entertainment*
Hastily doodled artwork by me
A Russia-linked network uses AI to rewrite real news stories
CopyCop churned out 19,000 deceptive posts in a month
Pluralistic: AI is a WMD (09 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
How banks create money
I posted this video on YouTube this morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yMMTDYFlLc
In case the video is not embedded properly (and that happens sometimes) it is available here.
The transcript is as follows:
The way that banks create money is so hideously simple that everyone needs to understand it.
People presume that somehow or other, creating money is...
The Human Tenure Trap — Joan Westenberg
It's easy to get caught up in the short-term game. Quarterly earnings, annual bonuses, and the relentless pressure to show progress can lead even the most visionary companies astray. Welcome to the Human Tenure Trap. Here's how it works: When managers join a company, they're often thinking about
Computers are binary, but humans aren't: why automated gender recognition is a high-tech gender essentialist fantasy
Automated Gender Recognition (AGR), sometimes referred to as ‘gender detection software’, takes a bio-essentialist construction of gender and codifies it.
Breaking Up With Capitalism
A paradigm shift for our economy begins when we name and see the anti-democratic bias that lies at the heart of our capital-centric system.
Why Exactly Won’t We Build?
Key quotes from Caplan’s Build Baby Build: Why is US housing to expensive? “Two words: government regulation … Housing prices stay high in desirable areas because most governments strictly regulate new construction. … ‘Take it from Paul Krugman, the most eminent progressive economist alive. “High housing prices in slow-growing states also owe a lot to policies that sharply limit construction. Limits on building heights in the cities, zoning that blocks denser development in the suburbs, and other policies constrict housing on both coasts.” …
Sowing division — Russian disinformation becoming more sophisticated | Yle News | Yle
Russian online interference is increasingly targeting smaller languages, including Finnish, to drive wedges into society.
Why Russian Propaganda Isn’t as Sophisticated as You Think - The Moscow Times
Opinion | It is widely assumed that Russia possesses unparalleled powers of manipulation, and that its ubiquitous propaganda is wreaking havoc on public opinion around the world. In reality, however, Russian propaganda is far from the sophisticated machine it is made out to be.
‘You’re going to call me a Holocaust denier now, are you?’: George Monbiot comes face to face with his local conspiracy theorist
Covid vaccines, chemtrails, the Great Reset … Why do people invent false conspiracies when there are so many real ones to worry about? There’s only one way to find out: ask a believer
Who Created the Israel-Palestine Conflict?
It wasn’t really Jews or Palestinians. It was the U.S. Congress, which closed American borders 100 years ago this month.
What the New Overtime Rule Means for Workers
The Department of Labor’s new overtime regulation is restoring and extending this promise for millions more lower-paid salaried workers in the U.S.
Pluralistic: Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election (06 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
The One Thing Holding Back Heat Pumps
If billionaires actually cared about saving the planet, they’d pool their vast wealth and buy everyone a heat pump. But it’s not funding, or the technology itself, that’s preventing a full heat pump takeover.
Economists' predictions from 1980 - Marginal REVOLUTION
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is the intro: Out of curiosity, I recently cracked open The American Economy in Transition, published in 1980, edited by Martin Feldstein and including contributions from… Nobel-winning economists [Samuelson, Friedman, Kuznets], successful business leaders and notable public servants. Though most of the essays get it wrong, […]
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy-Gang Crisis
Whistle-blowers say that a group called the Banditos functions as a shadow government within local law enforcement. The sheriff says there is no such gang in his department.
Did a student or ChatGPT write that paper? Does it matter? — Harvard Gazette
Sam Altman, CEO of firm that developed app, says ethics do matter, but they need to be rethought (and AI isn’t going away).
Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship: Vision Statement – David Sloan Wilson Online Archive
Armies need their own drone air force flown by specialist soldiers, study says
The air war over Ukraine has become a cat-and-mouse game where drones must constantly evolve to survive.
These Dangerous Scammers Don’t Even Bother to Hide Their Crimes
“Yahoo Boy” cybercriminals are openly running dozens of scams across Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and more. And they’re not afraid to show it off online.
The Coming Cyberocracy
Governance by AI is coming. The Coming Cyberocracy explores the failure of world leaders at a time when technology will soon rival human…
Ordoliberalism - Wikipedia
Ordoliberalism is the German variant of economic liberalism that emphasizes the need for government to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential but does not advocate for a welfare state (and did not advocate against one either).[1]
Overshoot: Why It’s Already Too Late To Save Civilization
Overshoot is the reason civilization is going to collapse. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion are merely symptoms.
Britain’s Tories Are Being Punished by Voters. Why Aren’t U.S. Republicans?
Today on TAP: Lessons from the Tory wipeout in local U.K. elections
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War,
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil…
Our Entire Society Is Becoming Addicted to Sports Gambling
Athletes are being caught in scandals, yes, but the bigger scandal is that the ease and prevalence of betting is driving a huge rise in addiction—and neither the leagues nor our politicians care.
Otaku - Wikipedia
Otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in Manga Burikko.