Pluralistic: 08 Nov 2022 Tech a la carte


Today's links

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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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Twitter Arguments

A theory of change

semachthemonkey/CC BY 3.0 (modified)

The kind of activism I do has a serious structural barrier: it’s esoteric. Even today, tech-policy issues are extremely niche. Indeed, tech-policy is a niche within a niche —most people have little technical knowledge and most people have little policy expertise, and the stuff I do requires that you have some of both.

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Pluralistic: 26 Jan 2021


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Pluralistic: 04 Aug 2020


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Pluralistic: 10 Jul 2020

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Pluralistic: 25 May 2020


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Pluralistic: 15 Apr 2020

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Pluralistic: 10 Apr 2020

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Pluralistic: 17 Mar 2020

Today's links

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

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