Brent Williams @hbw@qoto.org

Stop thinking of Twitter, TikTok, IG, (et al) as social media sites.

They are **Content Refineries.**

Like processed food manufacturers they take user content & extract the most addicting/engaging content. Brains eat it up but in an unhealthy “devour the whole bag of chips” way.

They make hyper-processed social media junk food.

Mastodon is more like a potluck. We're all bringing dishes. It's a mess. Kids are running all over. But we are, at least, real people sharing real things.

@PeteAguilar
I'm so angry — House Republicans have just introduced legislation to repeal the $35/month cap on insulin that Democrats passed for seniors on Medicare.

I need you to retweet and spread the word about this. Every voter needs to know.

fish biologists: please be very gentle when placing your fish friend into a new habitat you could hurt them

also fish biologists:

This Washington Post story demonstrates how completely routine it has become for journalists to use the word "conservative" to describe right-wing extremist.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/05/abortion-pills-texas-lawsuit/

The fact that right-wing extremism is now the the center of the Republican Party doesn't make it "conservative," but Big Journalism can't be bothered to explain any of this.

Our media's normalization of extremism accelerates.

I wrote this a year ago, and it still holds true: why would Putin invade Ukraine
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/?s=09

I was not ready for how hard she was gonna go on this Guzhang Polyphia cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RosDxQIjf8

This is very good news: “Investment in clean energy technologies is on the brink of overtaking fossil fuel investments, and won’t look back.”

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/clean-energy-investment-record-fossil-fuel-parity

"But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?"

—#KazuoIshiguro

#stories

As a huge fan of Ted Chiang's science fiction stories, I'm very excited to see him do a residency at the Santa Fe Institute:

Just as SFI’s scientists can’t predict what fresh perspective they might glean from conversations with Chiang, Chiang can’t predict whether those conversations will spur him to write new stories. He writes only when inspired.

Fingers crossed (and optimism!) that he finds that inspiration. Moreover, I think this approach is visionary, and that we should include more #scifi & #specfiction writers at our #science meetings:

Last summer, the normally reclusive writer took a more personal approach to contemplating big ideas when he joined a conference at SFI. The meeting had been convened to consider what a theory on life’s origins needed. What were the physical limitations of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Could intelligent life be constructed with different sets of molecular building blocks or did carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen need to be present for life to conjure? Chiang had been invited to offer an artistic perspective on the interface between intelligence and life.

https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/ted-chiang-joins-sfi-miller-scholars

This is the saddest headline I've ever seen. And there have been a whole lot of sad headlines lately.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/31/florida-hide-books-stop-woke-manatee-county-duval-county-desantis/

Psst: the rules of economics are invented and could be changed whereas the rules of planetary physics are observed and cannot.

I do my best proofraeding after I hit send.

> I love how humans have literally not changed throughout history like the graffiti from Pompeii has people from hundreds of years ago writing stuff like “Marcus is gay” “I fucked a girl here” “Julius your mum wishes she was with me” and leonardo da vinci’s assistants drew dicks in their notebooks just for the banter and mozart created a piece called “kiss my ass” so when people wish for ‘today’s generation’ to be like ‘how people used to’ then we’re already there buddy we’ve always been

> The Hagia Sophia has inscriptions that were considered sacred for centuries until they were deciphered in the 70s to be Nordic runes saying “Halfdan wrote this”

> my old english prof told us that theres a cave in Scandinavia where a viking gratified some runes like 14 feet up on the wall and when they finally reached it all it translated into was “this is very high”

> Ancient Shitposting
> Now on the History Channel

Absolutely no serious engagement with what *systemic* racism is and what it does to individuals in specific institutions; complete ignorance of the basic fact that police violence disproportionately affects people of color, everywhere in the U.S.

These are not serious people.

Absolute must-read on how we now know that #Russia and NY's corrupt #FBI office used "active measures" to ensure Trump's election. Until we understand this, our country is lost. #USpol #politics https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-specter-of-2016?utm_campaign=post

We must revisit the Russian influence operation on Trump’s behalf in 2016, and the strangely weak American response.

Moscow’s goal was to move minds and institutions such that Hillary Clinton would lose and Donald Trump would win.

We might like to think that any FBI special agent would resist, oppose, or at least be immune to such an operation.

Now we are reliably informed that a trusted FBI actor, one who was responsible for dealing with just this sort of operation, was corrupt.

The issue is not just the particular person. If someone as important as McGonigal could take money from foreigners while on the job at FBI New York, and then go to work for a sanctioned Russian oligarch he was once investigating, what is at stake, at a bare minimum, is the culture of the FBI's New York office.

The larger issue is the health of our national discussions of politics and the integrity of our election process.

See Kathleen Hall Jamieson - Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President: What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/cyberwar-9780190915810?cc=us&lang=en

The older I get, the less capitalist I become (and I'm a business owner). Capitalism is an economic game of winners and losers. Unfortunately, the loser is typically society at large.

#liberal #politics #economics #uspol #democracy #dedmocrat

#Libraries #Librarians #Books #Music #Movies #Internet #MoreThanYouThink

The @Olympics decision to open the door for Russian athletes shows a total lack of understanding of international politics. In order for the war to end and the regime to change, Russia must be totally isolated, and that includes sports. Close the door to brutal violence. Please.

🐦🔗: https://n.respublicae.eu/alexstubb/status/1618854516623052800