Pluralistic: 12 Feb 2021

Today's links

Aaron Epstein got fiber: All it took was an ad in the WSJ.
Ajit Pai, plague villain: Killing rural broadband just before a plague.
This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Fighting fiber was the right's dumbest self-own: "We don't have to care. We're the [phone company|social media monopolist]."
This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Big Car wants to pump the brakes on Right to Repair: Automotive makers v 76% of Massachusetts.
How to Fix the Internet: EFF has a podcast!
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Announcing the Attack Surface tour: Eight nights, 16 guests, and me, signing and mailing hundreds of books.
WV's deabeat governor now owes $140m: Billionaire Jim Justice made his money the old fashioned way: fraud.
Faulty TV behind daily, town-wide internet outages: The real story here is that Openreach actually fixed something.
Blogcritics on Attack Surface: "Doctorow has recreated our world in all its scary detail."
This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

How Big Tech distorts discourse: My free Oxford Internet Institute webinar.
Talking Job Guarantee with Pavlina Tcherneva: My latest for the LA Times.
Walkaway, Chicago-style: Protesters re-enact the climax of my 2017 novel (and it worked!)
759 Trump atrocities: McSweeney's saved the receipts.
Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act: $80B for universal fiber rollout.
Canada Reads is back: The debates will happen July 20-23.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

John Oliver's comprehensive explanation of the rot in US policing: It's in every bone and organ.
Cox violates the Geneva Conventions: The throttling will continue until morale improves.
Paramount's Unproduced Screenplays: A core sample of 1,000 ideas from the vault.
Police budgets are out of control: "More than the city spends on health, homelessness, youth development and workforce development combined."
Auditing Omniballot, a terrible e-voting system: Paper ballots, marked with pencils, accept no imitations.
Who are Dark Basin?: Outing the cybermercenaries who attacked Net Neutrality and anti-Exxon activists.
NYPD's structural racism: Bulk of NYPD human rights complaints come from Black and Latinx youth.
IBM kills facial recognition program: But the problem with facial recognition isn't just "bias."
Nutrition labels for IoT: Only works if there's competition.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Plutocrats firehose money on primary challenger to AOC: Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former Reagan Republican who wants to dismantle Social Security and Medicare
FCC will spend $9B to improve broadband…without an accurate broadband map: Reality's left-wing bias makes accurate data the enemy of conservativism.
Buddhist monk covers western pop songs: He's like a male, solo version of Shonen Knife.
Apple hunters recover ten "lost" varieties from forgotten farms: The Lost Apple Society needs help.
Finding the Money: A fabulous new documentary on Modern Monetary Theory
Evangelical pastor denied quarantine, now he wants your stimulus check: Tony Spell's death-cult has a business-model.
Zombie movies teach us all the wrong lessons for pandemic: Not only would a zombie plague be easy to contain, but people don't turn into monsters during crises.
Building a "web of books": What would a federated alternative to Goodreads look like?
The Facebook Political Ad Collector: Exposing targeted advertising's fraud and conspiracy
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Pickled 2001 computer store: Deadstock ahoy!
A farewell to APIs: Greed, spam and entropy killed mashups.
Machine learning model performs butthole recognition: Peak Internet of Shit.
Covid loteria cards: Cabronavirus.
California's fiber for all bill: Tell your senator to support SB1130.
1978 Doonesbury stereotype: Come for the Indochina political humor, stay for the printer's lore.
LA crime plummets: Down 23% (domestic violence is down 11%).
US stimulus is one week's cash: Deflation ahoy.
Private equity blinks on cuts to health workers' wages: Speeding up slow destruction makes it impossible to ignore.
Virtual greenscreen: Incredible computer science paper from the 2020 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
Landlord changes church's locks: The pastor of Cross Culture Christian Center in Lodi, CA refused to stop holding services.
This day in history: 2010, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading