Month: February 2020

Pluralistic: 29 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. EFF is hiring a new tech projects director: It's a once-in-a-lifetime dream job.
  2. Bond villain monologue, Medicare for All edition: "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to sign a binding arbitration waiver."
  3. FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL: A 26% alcohol habanero spirit from Empirical Spirits.
  4. Mike Bloomberg helped the Sacklers launder their reputations: Just helping out the "Friends of Mike."
  5. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a climate plan as big as the climate crisis: No one ever asked how we'd pay for WWII.
  6. Cutting the UK housing subsidy led to massive homelessness payouts: Tories are always swallowing spiders to catch their flies.
  7. This day in history: 2012, 2016 (leap years!)
  8. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic: 29 Feb 2020"

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 28 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. Clearview AI's customer database leaks: Sic semper grifter.
  2. The Internet of Anal Things: Recreating Stelarc's "Amplified Body" with an IoT butt-plug.
  3. Oakland's vintage Space Burger/Giant Burger building needs a home! Adopt a googie today.
  4. Fan-made reproduction of the Tower of Terror: Even has a deepfaked Serling.
  5. Drawing the Simpsons with pure CSS: Impractical, but so impressive.
  6. Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert: 89% of the web is now encrypted.
  7. AI Dungeon Master: A work in progress, for sure.
  8. How to lie with (coronavirus) maps: Lies, damned lies, and epidemiological data-visualizations.
  9. This day in history: 2019, 2015
  10. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 28 Feb 2020"

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 27 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. Ripping the window-dressing off the .ORG selloff: It's not even an ethos.
  2. CDC guide to filter-mask-friendly facial hair: You're good to go with a Zappa, Villain or Hitler, but stay away from the Dali, Hulahee and the dread F(l)u Manchu.
  3. Don't trust Google to build Toronto's Smart City: Sidewalk Labs's sleaze has disqualified it.
  4. A "girls-only" social service wants to analyze your facial bone structure: "It's science!"
  5. Norman Rockwell turned into a radical civil rights activist: His last painting was of Nixon, too.
  6. Gmail's filters are blocking opt-in election emails: Mayo Pete and Andrew Yang are winning the spam-filter primary.
  7. Talking Radicalized with The Next Chapter: Shelagh Rogers is a national treasure.
  8. Neoliberalism kills, the coronavirus edition: And you thought capitalism would kill us all with climate change!
  9. Bernie Sanders and Public Enemy LA rally this Sunday: With Sarah Silverman and Dick van Dyke!
  10. Venezuelan women's "army" break into dead factories to reboot them: "Only the people can save the people."
  11. Meet Akil Augustine, voice of the Raptors…and Radicalized: A fighter in my corner.
  12. This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2005
  13. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 27 Feb 2020"

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 26 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. Brave autolinks 404s to the Wayback Machine: The internet's time-traveling, privacy respecting, ad-busting browser.
  2. Clarence Thomas admits he blew it on Brand X: A very safe mea culpa from the man who helped kill Net Neutrality.
  3. Medicare for All would be the biggest take-home pay increase in a generation: Even if my taxes went up by six figures (!), I'd still save money.
  4. The Smithsonian publishes 2.8m hi-rez images into the public domain: Tired: "It belongs in a museum!" Wired: "It belongs to the world!"
  5. McMansion Hell visits 1971: Before "lawyer foyers" there were "paralegal foyers."
  6. This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019
  7. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 26 Feb 2020"

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 25 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. Russian Multiplication: turning hard multiplication into easy addition with binary.
  2. Cops' qualified immunity: so long as it's not identical to an established atrocity, it's fine.
  3. Bloomberg's Plan B: buying the DNC: I don't care who does the voting, so long as I get to do the nominating.
  4. Private equity looters underperform the S&P 500: Believing that you are accomplishing extraordinary things merely because you are paid extraordinary amounts is top-grade self-delusion.
  5. New podcast about the history of Gopher and adversarial interoperability: It's judo for network effects.
  6. This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019
  7. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 25 Feb 2020"

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 24 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. How "Authoritarian Blindness" kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus: Zeynep Tufekci in outstanding form.
  2. The Snowden Archive: every publicly available Snowden doc, collected and annotated.
  3. Key computer vision researcher quits: facial recognition is a moral quagmire.
  4. My interview on adversarial interoperability: you can't shop your way out of late-stage capitalism.
  5. 81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration: monopoly and its justice system.
  6. I'm coming to Kelowna! Canada Reads is bringing me to the BC interior, March 5.
  7. A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory: conspiracies are comorbid with corruption.
  8. This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010, 2005
  9. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 24 Feb 2020"

Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 22 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. Tax Justice Network publishes a new global Financial Secrecy Index: US and UK, neck-and-neck
  2. What Marc Davis lifted from the Addams Family while designing the Haunted Mansion: Amateurs plagiarize, artists steal
  3. ICANN should demand to see the secret financial docs in the .ORG selloff: at least it's an Ethos
  4. Wells Fargo will pay $3b for 2 million acts of fraud: they shoulda got the corporate death penalty
  5. This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010
  6. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 22 Feb 2020"

Pluralist, a daily link-dose: 21 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. Bloomberg's campaign NDA is a gag order that covers sexual abuse and other crimes: Bloomberg's lowest moment at the debate came when he fumfuhed over whether he'd release women from his corporate NDAs.
  2. Private Equity has sabotaged every attempt to end emergency room "surprise billing": AKA, "Why didn't you ask your ambulance driver to shop around?"
  3. The Parkland kids have launched a zine: "Unquiet" is a gorgeous, haunting zine from the March For Our Lives, debuted on Teen Vogue.
  4. Tumblr's ad policy: you can't block ads because we don't live in a post-scarcity society.
  5. Gopher shows us how adversarial interoperability was there from the start: the web's precursor depended on adversarial interop to win its place in history, and the web vanquished gopher with yet more adversarial interop
  6. A line of hardcovers designed to double as decor accents: I want to hate this, but they're so pretty!
  7. $2b later, Blue Apron is broke: incoming podcast apocalypse in 3, 2, 1….
  8. Tour Cards Against Humanity's incredible board-game cafe: when amazing people spend amazing sums.
  9. The team behind Frozen are making a musical out of Jen Wang's Prince and the Dressmaker: holy smokes, is this ever great news!
  10. This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010
  11. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralist, a daily link-dose: 21 Feb 2020"

Pluralist, a daily link-dose: 20 Feb 2020

Today's links

  1. The 2020 Nebula Award Finalists: a bumper crop of outstanding SF
  2. Uber driver/sharecroppers drive like maniacs to make quota: subprime lending + gig economy = stay off the roads
  3. Barclay's bankers forced to endure nagging work-computer spyware: the shitty technology adoption curve at work
  4. Bernie Sanders leads in 10 out of 10 polls: but unless he can get a majority of pledged delegates, he'll be ratfucked by superdelegates
  5. Bloomberg: kids only like Sanders because they're stupid: "Because our kids no longer learn civics in school they longer study Western history, they no longer read Western literature…"
  6. "Secure erase" with a bolt-cutter: Jamie Zawinski doesn't mess around when it comes to getting rid of old hard drives.
  7. Adding 2 inches of tape to a road-sign induces sudden 50mph acceleration in Teslas: Adversarial examples are unstoppable.
  8. Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralist, a daily link-dose: 20 Feb 2020"

Pluralist: 19 Feb 2020

Contents

  1. The Woman Who Loved Giraffes: a documentary about Anne Innis Dagg, the magnificent feminist biologist and critic of pseudoscience like evolutionary psychology.
  2. Machine learning doesn't fix racism: experiments in using machine-learning "risk assessment" for bail hearings collapse in ignominy.
  3. Rethinking "de-growth" and material culture: great commentary from Kate "McMansion Hell" Wagner.
  4. Bernie Sanders is a clear favorite among "regular Democrats." 71% approval and 19% disapproval!
  5. Trump's border wall defeated by 99 pesos' worth of rebar.
  6. Capitalism without capitalists: companies are not their shareholders' property. Companies own themselves.
  7. Rental car immobilizes itself when driven out of cellular range: Unauthorized Bread, but for cars!
  8. Nearly half of medical devices haven't been patched against the Bluekeep vuln
  9. Glowing Randotti skull-prints: Coop revives the golden age of Haunted Mansion merch.
  10. Ios is now a vehicle to deliver unblockable adware
  11. Colophon

Continue reading "Pluralist: 19 Feb 2020"