Pluralistic: 25 Jan 2021

Today's links

Plute buys mayor's house and serves eviction papers: How money is power, and how power corrupts.
Podcast of Someone Comes to Town: Part 29 – closing in on the terminal edition!
This day in history: 2006, 2016, 2020
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Hong Kong's ghost protest posters: "I Can Still Hear You."
Basic income works: Some thoughts on whether it should be "universal."
Sign thief turns newspaper thief: Hiassenish caper with Iowa characteristics.
Attack Surface in The Observer: "This will all be so great if we don't screw it up."
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Facebook's foreseeable election consequences: Incompetence AND malice?
David Graeber on Spectre TV: Rest in power, David.
This day in history: 2005, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Fight the Power: Another summer.
Physicists overestimate their epidemiology game: Dunning-Kruger, meet the vaporisation of qualitative factors.
Trump is a salesman: He lacks the attention-span for fascism.
CO asphyxiation accounts for half of Hurricane Laura deaths: Generators are as deadly as 40mph winds.
Political ads have very small effect-sizes: Mind-control rays remain elusive.
Incredible Proof Machine: Lineal descendant of Sierra's Incredible Machine.
Kickstarting a Girl Genius game: Adventures in Castle Heterodyne.
This day in history: 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Constitution Illustrated: R Sikoryak's amazing chameleon take on the US Constitution.
My HOPE 2020 talk: Trying out my "grand unified theory."
Replace the police: 10 steps to improve safety by reducing dependence on police.
NYPD disciplinary records: Propublica has the receipts.
New podcast episode: Part 11 of "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town."
Finger-mounted crossbows: For your cuke-slaying needs.
This day in history: 2010, 2015
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

US passports basically worthless: Trump built a wall.
DNA Lounge deletes Postmates: Your pizza dollars, murdering future Jamal Khashoggis.
Mississippi's GOP lawmakers sicken: Dozens of mask-shunners test positive.
Wirecard's vanished COO wanted 15,000 Libyan militiamen: German finance scandal hides geopolitical private army scandal.
Near Future Labs' Covid Zine: Design fiction meets the unfathomable future.
This day in history: 2010, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Al Jaffee has retired: MAD's tribute to a 99-year-old legend.
Raffi on radical politics: The more we get together the happier we'll be.
Podcast: Part 6 of "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town": Young love, strange love.
Force Multiplier: Free Little Brother story for Attack Surface pre-orders, UK edition.
Socializing with spreadsheets: Party in a shared doc.
Red state pandemic rising: Pools can't have pissing and non-pissing ends.
US cyberdefense is AWOL: US "cyber" spending is all offense, no defense.
Scraping traffic-cams to capture police violence: NY activists are archiving public camera footage.
Huge trove of unprotected dating-app data: 845GB of pics, chat and PII hanging out in unprotected Amazon buckets.
This day in history: 2010, 2015
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Dems can and MUST fight police violence: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil…
Save Uncle Hugo's: Crowdfunding for Minneapolis's beloved, torched science fiction bookstore.
Ella Jones is Ferguson's new mayor: The city's first Black mayor.
Why protests become violent: Cops keep mashing the "be violent" button.
PPE vs riot gear: Revealed preference, revealed.
Zoom wants to help the FBI spy on you: Encryption is a luxury good.
Trivial-to-spoof UK contact tracing: A gift to identity thieves and fraudsters.
AT&T; will punish Disney+ viewers: Can you hear me now?
K-pop fandom pivots to human rights hacktivism: Flooding the zone with fancams.
This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Big Tech distorts our discourse: No mind-control required.
How the IoT reinforces gentrification: Smart doorbells and predictive policing are fully automated karens.
Private equity goes mainstream: If you're gonna loot, you MUST also asset-strip.
What to do about the police: 15 concrete things that should be done to reform American policing, right now.
Masks work: Source control is a thing.
Walmart's crummy anti-theft AI: Employees blow the whistle on their employers' credulous machine learning procurements.
GOP lawmaker hid his diagnosis from Democrats: Andrew Lewis wandered around Pennsylvania's statehouse, shedding virus particles.
Canadians newsrooms restructure as co-ops: And readers can join!
Get a peronalized, signed Poesy the Monster Slayer: Dark Delicacies will ship you copies signed by me and the original Poesy.
This day in history: 2005, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Crowdfunding an open access jewelry course: Elise Matheson wants to preserve her "wandering wire" methodology.
Bahamas Company Registry leaked: Another service of the Distributed Denial of Secrets project.
Mafia logic and conservative ideology: There is a difference.
Podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Part 4: Enter Kurt.
Google's free/open multilingual font: Banishing tofu with Noto.
Soviet Signs and Relics: A book of sovkitsch sourced from Google Street View.
Rogue UK civil service tweet damns "truth-twisters": Impunity rage.
A jailbreak for every version of Ios: Attacking is easier than defending.
Texas Instruments locks down its hackable calculators: Designed to control the user.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading