Month: February 2023

Pluralistic: VW wouldn't locate kidnapped child because his mother didn't pay for find-my-car subscription (28 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: VW wouldn't locate kidnapped child because his mother didn't pay for find-my-car subscription (28 Feb 2023)"

Pluralistic: Podcasting "Twiddler" (27 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: Podcasting "Twiddler" (27 Feb 2023)"

Pluralistic: Dow promised to turn sneakers into playground surfaces, then dumped them in Indonesia (26 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: Dow promised to turn sneakers into playground surfaces, then dumped them in Indonesia (26 Feb 2023)"

United We Stand

Creation is collective — and so is bargaining.

A giant figure posed against a blue, cloudy sky. On his shoulder perches a tiny Taylor Swift, mid-gesture. She is being menaced by a capitalist ogre in tuxedo and top-hat, chomping a cigar and yanking a lever in the shape of a golden dollar sign. In one white-gloved hand, he holds aloft a gramophone, pointing it at Swift. He stands at a podium emblazoned with the Big Machine Records logo.
Biswarup Ganguly/CC BY 3.0, E Palen/CC BY 2.0, ViewIndiaThroughMyVisionalView/CC BY 4.0; modified

For the second half of the 20th century, artists of all stripes were fed a Big Lie: namely, that when we created, we did so all on our lonesome. Our creative works were solely and wholly ours, sprung from our imagination, like Athena springing from the head of Zeus.

Continue reading "United We Stand"

Pluralistic: This is your brain on fraud apologetics (24 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: This is your brain on fraud apologetics (24 Feb 2023)"

Pluralistic: Fighting the privacy wars, state by state (23 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: Fighting the privacy wars, state by state (23 Feb 2023)"

Pluralistic: Matt Ruff's "Destroyer of Worlds" (21 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: Matt Ruff's "Destroyer of Worlds" (21 Feb 2023)"

Pluralistic: Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU (20 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU (20 Feb 2023)"

Pluralistic: Pluralistic is three (19 Feb 2023)


Today's links

Continue reading "Pluralistic: Pluralistic is three (19 Feb 2023)"

Twiddler

Configurability for Me, But Not For Thee.

A mandala made from a knob and button-covered control panel.
Stephen Drake/CC BY 2.0 (modified)

Tracking Exposed is a scrappy European nonprofit that attempts to understand how online recommendation algorithms work. They comine data from volunteers who install a plugin with data acquired through “headless browsers,” to attempt to reverse-engineer the principles that determine what you see when you visit or search Tiktok, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook or Pornhub.

Continue reading "Twiddler"