Pluralistic: 24 Jul 2020

Today's links

Facebook's morale problem: Facebookers worry that they're destroying civilization.
My HOPE keynote this Sat: We Used to Have Cake, Now We've Barely Got Icing.
Changes coming to UK's feudal "leaseholds": Britain's rentier class loses, a little.
Konstantine Anthony for Burbank City Council: All politics are local.
Private equity doesn't create value, it destroys it: Wealth accumulation doesn't signify value-creation.
Mass market book sales surge: But it's just trading one monopolist for another.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

The Case for a Job Guarantee: Pavlina Tcherneva's urgent pamphlet, in the midst of the employment crisis of the century.
The real cyberwar is Goliath, slaughtering an army of Davids: It's asymmetric, but the asymmetry goes the other way
Coders as RPG classes: Product managers are bards.
Podcast: Someone Comes to Town Pt 7: The Father's Day episode.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Alvim Corrêa's War of the Worlds illustrations: They started as fan art.
America's corporate lobbyists want a bailout: It's the political version of the human centipede.
Sacrifice banks to save businesses: Either we nerf landlords and banks to save businesses and jobs, or the businesses and jobs will collapse and take out landlords and banks.
Scarfolk death statistics: Juking the stats.
Chef paints portrait of every meal he eats: Itsuo Kobayashi has been at it for 32 years.
Appeals court says Miami jail doesn't need to provide soap: When waiting for your hearing becomes a death sentence.
Ohio's got snitchline for bosses whose workers who won't go back: Reopen and/or die.
Magic Puzzles: From Max "Cards Against Humanity" Temkin and friends.
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

EFF's videoconferencing backgrounds: With a deep cut from the NSA's secret listening post.
The ideology of economics: Economics doesn't have "laws" it has "policies."
LoC plugs Little Brother: Open access FTW.
Canada nationalizes covid patents: An Act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19.
Exponential Threat: Trump threatened to sue media outlets that aired this spot.
Sanders on GOP stimulus cruelty: "Millions for plutes, but not one cent for workers."
Record wind-power growth: Covid stimulus could start a Green New Deal.
Social distancing and other diseases: Do we trust IoT thermometer companies, though?
Badger Masks: UW Madison's open facemask design.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

This year's Nebula Awards will be held online: It's $150, and raising funds to bail out corona-shattered writers.
Make America Well Again stamps: from the artist who brought you the Trump Zero Cents stamp.
Data is the new toxic waste: It never was the "new oil" (my latest podcast).
Stock Jump: A ski-game that lets you play the stock charts of cratered businesses.
Murdering 20% of elderly Americans is bad strategy for the GOP: Terrified old people are the turkeys who vote for plutes' Christmas every four years.
Join me on the Quarantine Book Club: April 1, 3PM Pacific.
The Party of Death: It's a good time to buy exterminism futures.
Financial stability vs economic stability: Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid.
Quarantine reveals the falsity of the automation crisis: Augmentation isn't replacement.
Bailouts and moral hazard: If we never teach big business, it won't ever learn.
MIT's ingenious manual/automatic open source ventilator: Now in FDA testing.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The worst Democrat in Congress just lost his job: Dan Lipinski primaried by the amazing Marie Newman.
Canada Reads documentary on Radicalized: The Great Canadian Book debate is indefinitely postponed, but here's an hour on my book!
Africa's Facebook modders are world leaders: Technological self-determination through adversarial interoperability.
Imagineering in a Box: Interdisciplinary theme park design lessons from Khan Academy and Disney.
Data is the New Toxic Waste: It was never "the new oil."
How to structure a fair covid bailout: Stimulus, not private jets.
Fox News is a suicide cult: Telling your elderly viewers to perform tribal loyalty by engaging in high-risk behaviors is a career-limiting move.
Grocery supply chains are resilient: One less thing to worry about.
Magic in the time of coronavirus: Never let a good crisis go to waste, card-trick edition.
This day in history: 2010, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The Masque of the Red Death and Punch Brothers Punch: My latest podcast is Poe/Twain bathos crossover.
Fill in your census online: Otherwise you and people you care about literally won't count.
Naomi Klein: this disaster has no room for disaster capitalism: It's our moment to seize.
Scalzi's canceled bookstore: Support your local indie bookseller, especially now.
My Twitter account was suspended: I got in trouble for putting trolls on a list called "Colossal Assholes."
Talking digital writing careers with the Writing Excuses podcast: Covering a lot of ground in 15 minutes.
A new anxiety podcast from Nightvale's Joseph Fink: Proud to be in the debut episode.
Patent trolls try to shut down covid testing: Monkey-selfies, Theranos, Softbank – it's a garbage matrioshke!
How to live with your kids: "Working and Learning from Home with Young Children."
Brave files GDPR complaint against Google: Sharing data between Google services is a no-no.
This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading