Pluralistic: 07 Apr 2020

Today's links

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

Private equity looting public health in a pandemic: The math is part of the con.
MacGuyver mask tutorial: Crafter/filmmaker marriages for the win.
Prescient Reagan-era text-adventures: What we can learn from the 1985 Infocom game "A Mind Forever Voyaging."
Landlord accidentally organizes rent strike: When you're threatening 300 tenants, don't CC them all on on the email.
The Pandumbic: Fox News is a suicide cult.
This day in history: 2005, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Wood-metal worry beads: Chris Bathgate's latest, "The Woody."
Overly descriptive color palettes: Handpicked from the Colorschemez bot.
American Prospect high-school essay contest: An antidote to the Ayn Rand Institute contest.
Snowden's Box: The logistics of leaking are a mix of tradecraft and philosophy.
Alteon cuts covid-fighters' pay: $20k paycuts for docs fighting covid-19.
Tiktok Kremlinology: Systematically exploring Tiktok's algorithm.
American employment exceptionalism: Why the US is losing jobs much faster than other countries.
Solar as a beneficial fad: How good ideas spread.
This day in history: 2015, 2010, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Lax antitrust killed ventilator stockpiles : The USG procured <$3k ventilators from a startup, so an incumbent bought them and shuttered them.
Koch network demands an end to lockdown: While sending its staff home for their safety.
Private equity firms scooping up pandemic bargains: It's not the wound that gets ya, it's the opportunistic parasitic infections.
Digital rights are human rights: Why broadband should be a public utility.
ACLU vanquishes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: Terms of Service violations are not felonies.
Munching Squares and Munching Tunes: The music and visuals of slow-decay phosphors.
This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Ripping the window-dressing off the .ORG selloff: It's not even an ethos.
CDC guide to filter-mask-friendly facial hair: You're good to go with a Zappa, Villain or Hitler, but stay away from the Dali, Hulahee and the dread F(l)u Manchu.
Don't trust Google to build Toronto's Smart City: Sidewalk Labs's sleaze has disqualified it.
A "girls-only" social service wants to analyze your facial bone structure: "It's science!"
Norman Rockwell turned into a radical civil rights activist: His last painting was of Nixon, too.
Gmail's filters are blocking opt-in election emails: Mayo Pete and Andrew Yang are winning the spam-filter primary.
Talking Radicalized with The Next Chapter: Shelagh Rogers is a national treasure.
Neoliberalism kills, the coronavirus edition: And you thought capitalism would kill us all with climate change!
Bernie Sanders and Public Enemy LA rally this Sunday: With Sarah Silverman and Dick van Dyke!
Venezuelan women's "army" break into dead factories to reboot them: "Only the people can save the people."
Meet Akil Augustine, voice of the Raptors…and Radicalized: A fighter in my corner.
This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2005
Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Russian Multiplication: turning hard multiplication into easy addition with binary.
Cops' qualified immunity: so long as it's not identical to an established atrocity, it's fine.
Bloomberg's Plan B: buying the DNC: I don't care who does the voting, so long as I get to do the nominating.
Private equity looters underperform the S&P 500: Believing that you are accomplishing extraordinary things merely because you are paid extraordinary amounts is top-grade self-delusion.
New podcast about the history of Gopher and adversarial interoperability: It's judo for network effects.
This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading