Yeah, by all means let guilds and industry associations have their little awards and ceremonies. Why not? I just don't care for something so provincial and political as the #Oscars.
I wish there were something like [The Greatest Books](https://thegreatestbooks.org/) but for #film and #music. I only know of [IMDb “Top Movies”](https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/) and of #RottenTomatoes, but those two don't seem balanced nor independent enough to me.
@przemek@soc.sakrajda.eu
I used it only a couple of times, the day I discovered it. Once it worked well, and the other one it failed. I assumed the “failure” was a blip 🤷♂️
Alternatives:
* https://archive.ph/
* https://archive.org/web/
* Save in https://getpocket.com/ and open in “article view”
tripu
boosted
@tripu Yup, but in this case there's actually a deaf oscar winner who should get some attention too...
I'm deaf, so that's got a bit more value to me. Moreso than the silly slap.
That too, I guess.
Although the Oscars themselves are only slightly more interesting to me than the stupid Will Smith thing.
(The #Oscars are a cheesy event where a specific organisation gives awards to a very homogeneous handful of rich people; the whole thing is horribly US-centric, the merits of the winning films are dubious at best, and it works as an hours-long commercial wrapped in glitter.)
Against #thenews, more evidence:
#WillSmith #WillSmith #WillSmith #ChrisRock #ChrisRock #ChrisRock everywhere the punch the scandal the speech the shame the arguments and counter-arguments the gender angle omg #meme #meme #meme outrage joke still clip another angle the gender discussion again omfg #WillSmith WHAT HAVEN'T YOU HEARD ABOUT IT? EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT IT DUDE! #meme #meme #meme bandwidth ink focus pages culture wars #WillSmith #WillSmith #WillSmith #ChrisRock #ChrisRock #ChrisRock
So disgusting. Intellectual porn — of the bad kind, even. And so many consequential and inspiring and worrying and beautiful things going on at the same time.
@przemek@soc.sakrajda.eu That's even worse, yes!
What does it say of us as a civilisation that the most reliable hint that something might be spam, phishing, fake, is _still_ that it has lots of spelling mistakes, bad grammar, and seems written by a little child??
@przemek@soc.sakrajda.eu
That doesn't look bad at all! (Get well.)
“Listen, boomers!
You know #monogamy? That oppressive and reactionary institution that you insist is more fulfilling and leads to better, healthier relationships?
We reject it! We're queer and progressive and have thought hard about it! Don't you dare impose on us your narrow vision of what #love and #sex ought to be.
We've experimented and reflected, and we freely choose…
MONOGAMY! Ha!
In your face!”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vxxy/what-is-radical-monogamy
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[_Riesgos Catastróficos Globales_](https://riesgoscatastroficosglobales.com/) y [_Altruismo Eficaz Hispanohablantes_](https://www.altruismoeficaz.org/) tienen abierto un generoso **concurso de ensayos sobre #xrisks** ✍️
https://riesgoscatastroficosglobales.com/articulos/concurso-de-ensayos
The idea/complaint above would be familiar to anyone who, like me, is not an American nor lives in #America, but leads (admittedly: by choice) a rather US-centric life.
In the sense that I read much more in English than in my mother tongue (literature, essays, blog posts, social media), I pay more attention to American intellectuals and media figures than to authors in my own country, I listen to podcasts produced mostly in the US, etc.
Someone like me — living in a better democracy than the US (according to studies I've seen), with longer life expectancy, lower crime rates, a much longer history as a country, involved in fewer wars, etc — sometimes grows tired of hearing so much about the uniqueness of America, the unprecedented experiment that it is, the unparalleled clarity of the Founding Fathers… Is that really so? Even today? Or is it American chauvinism, provincialism, or ignorance?
Hypothesis worth researching:
**All the allegedly novel and unprecedented ideas that are usually mentioned as the root of American exceptionalism where already well defined and implemented, at least to some extent, somewhere else, before the 🇺🇸 #USA even existed.**
I'm referring to things such as: **individual liberty, liberalism, republicanism, the pursuit of happiness, capitalism, check and balances, all men created equal, meritocracy, the melting pot, federalism, separation of church and state, cult of innovation, respect for private initiative**, etc.
Whatever one picks as the definite defining characteristic (or even: whatever _combination_ of a few of those), it was already “invented” before #America. True?
Soft version: even if the combination of ideas was truly novel back then, as soon as a few other prosperous nations adopted them successfully, the USA stopped being unique or exceptional in its political system. Much in the same way nobody today talks of Greece as a beacon or as a model for prosperity or welfare just because democracy was first tried there.
True?
Honest question. I don't know enough #History or #PoliticalPhilosophy to answer my own question.
(This realisation was prompted by a few serendipitous things this week: a previous co-worker promoting with majestic words a new venture on LinkedIn, seeing the pretentious profile of another old workmate who just joined #bigtech, reading about the eccentricities of #JackDorsey…)
I don't know if it's me having worked full-time for nine organisations already (five of them for-profit #startups), the industry itself having changed, me getting old and grumpy, or a combination of all of the above, but **too often now, the typical start-up attitude feels almost disgusting to me**.
The jargon, the buzzwords, the grandiose goals, the productivity hacks, the hyped substacks or podcasts, the cheesy taglines, the obsession with “growth” and “disruption”…
I still love #tech and the #web, I think #software is still eating the world, and I believe in great organisations developing novel ideas with a net positive impact.
But [“Silicon Valley”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series)), which used to be a parody, became a docu-series with the passage of (little) time.
Perhaps it was always that way, and I've grown more mature. Or maybe things got worse.
Thoughts?
