Pluralistic: 07 Nov 2022 The good news is that Penguin Random House can't buy all the other publishers


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The End of the Road to Serfdom

Party’s Over, Pleb.

For most of the modern era, most people in the rich world have been poor, just like their parents and their children. Social mobility was more dream than reality. Most people were born to serve, as were their children.

The ruling minority liked to imagine that the human oxen laboring in their fields and the women who cleaned their homes and cooked their meals were happy with their lot, and professed shock and horror whenever these hereditary servers sought out ways to improve their station — whether that was by joining the industrial revolution or striking out for a colonized land and the promise of stolen estates and downtrodden servants of their own.

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Pluralistic: 01 Nov 2022 "When Franny Stands Up," Eden Robins' debut novel


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How to Leave Dying Social Media Platforms

(without ditching your friends)

An imaginary dialog box from a future Facebook; the user is being asked whether they want to continue to follow a friend who has left Facebook and is now on a small, community-managed social media service.

Lazar: Tevye! Tevye, I’m on my way.

Tevye: Where are you going?

Lazar: Chicago, in America.

Tevye: Chicago, America? We are going to New York, America.

Lazar: We’ll be neighbors. My wife, Fruma Sarah, may she rest in peace, has a brother there.

Tevye: That’s nice.

Lazar: I hate him, but a relative is a relative.

Collective Action Inaction in Action

In the opening scenes of the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, the narrator, Tevye, introduces us to his village of Anatevka, which is a pretty fraught place where people are unhappy and danger is on the horizon. Nearly three hours and (spoiler alert) innumerable indignities and terrors later, Tevye and his neighbors leave the village, all to go their separate ways.

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Pluralistic: 28 Oct 2022 Adobe steals your color


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Pluralistic: 27 Oct 2022 Substituting economics for politics is a failure


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Pluralistic: 26 Oct 2022 Uline's billions fund voter suppression


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Pluralistic: 24 Oct 2022 An hour of interwar Halloween music


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Pluralistic: 23 Oct 2022 The Persuaders (how minds really change)


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How to Fix Cars* By Breaking “Felony Contempt of Business Model”

(*Also Wheeelchairs, Tractors, iPhones, Toasters and Printers)

A hackeneyed “hacker in a hoodie” image; in place of a face is a BMW steering wheel. Behind the figure is a three-tier stack of crushed cars.

On the origin of anti-features

They’re called “anti-features”: artificial limitations built onto the products we buy. These are limitations no customer asked for — and indeed, they’re limitations customers would pay to remove — if only they could.

The first anti-features were “DRM” (Digital Rights Management), like the “region-locks” on DVD players that stopped you from using a player you bought in one country to play back a disc you bought somewhere else.

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