deathmtn

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I've been reading Ten Reasons to Delete Your Social Media Accounts. Much of it is stuff you already knew (albeit well-organized in this book) like the problem of social media intentionally destroying shared reality and the provoking of negative emotions to increase engagement (or as the author calls it, behavioral modification).

There's been several surprises, though, like the fact that the all-encompassingness of social media has people thinking there's just no other way. He compares this to what people think about Uber: That to have a convenient cab system, you have to exploit drivers and have a nice app for coordinating them. Most people have gotten to think that it's impossible to both pay drivers reasonable and to have a nice app.

Similarly, the inevitability of no-charge ad-driven software is rarely challenged in social media.

The other unchallenged assumption the book mentions is that people do not deserve to be paid for the data they provide which makes machine learning models that generate millions of dollars. Machine learning translation, for example, is said to be making human translators obsolete for many use care. But who provided the data to train those models?

It is wrong for a corporation to seize knowledge from people in order to (literally) enrich themselves.

I have thought before about Gmail, Twitter, et al taking their users' data in order to build models that make it easy for their customers to modify their behavior, be the customers shoe sellers or intelligence agencies. But certainly, they also use this data to train models that will make whole industries obsolete and put these users out of work.

I think I've been playing video games about once a month for the past several months, but I gotta say, I still enjoy Dead Cells and Kero Blaster each time. They both, and Kero Blaster especially, makes me feel satisfied even though I've just died.

I just got Dark Souls. I'll find out if it'll make it into the infrequent but regular rotation whenever it finishes downloading.

Sometimes I feel like I'm beating a dead horse when I talk about this, but not that many people I know use it, so it must not be dead enough: Interlibrary loan is incredible.

Just now, I saw a Susan Sontag quote that seemed contemporary, then saw that it was from a book published in 1977. Then, I headed to the Minuteman Library Network, searched for it, and hit the "Request It" button.

Now, it will be shipped to a library close to me. I'll get an email about it in couple days, then I'll walk over, take it home, and read it (or not). All for free.

0 checks today.

Bowers, who was also injured in the shooting, reportedly told police that “all these Jews need to die,” and posted anti-Semitic comments on Gab, a site that vehemently defends free speech, and frequented by the alt-right. Just before the shooting, Bowers posted a comment on his purported account, referencing the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HAIS) and said, “I can’t sit by an watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in.”

Free speech, parrhesia.

There is something Fukuyama said in that podcast that I agree with, though: When asked if we were moving on to something new and possibly better that democracy, he said that it's quite possible that we won't move on to a new system of government at all. He pointed to a lot of the left talking about things that have been tried and have failed.

This makes me think of the jokey but sincere interest in communism. The tankie kind that throws around the hammer and sickle.

They say it'll be different if they do it again. The United States has committed the crime of letting millions go without adequate food and shelter. But when the USSR (and China and North Korea) was given the amount of power necessary to implement communism, they deliberatly killed millions of its citizens, which is worse.

No one is talking about what they'd do to ensure that does not happen. If that's not a concern that proponents of communism take seriously enough to explain concretely how they'd prevent genocide, then it is a flirtation with genocide.

I was listening to the Talking Politics episode with Francis Fukuyama talking about his new book about identity politics. His book does not seem good, but I haven't read it. Re: his comments in the podcast, I disagree in particular with his recommendation that Democrats try to win back angry White voters by appealing to patriotism and deemphasizing race as Lincoln did.

Then, the host, David Runciman asks him, but wasn't that Obama? I literally laughed OL.

Fukuyama very honestly acknowledges that it was and that there was so much racist resentment that it fueled White identity politics, and it didn't matter what Obama actually said. So, I have to wonder: Does he mean that the Democrats should nominate a White man to say exactly the same things as Obama? Is this a sustainable and reasonable way out?

Hey, 0 checks today! That's what being super busy will do for you.

I worked a lot this week on a work project. This is normally a thing I do not do because it shifts a childcare burden onto Katt and because I believe firmly that 8-hour workdays are important to maintaining a life and your dignity.

This was a fairly rare opportunity, though. In retrospect, I'm not sure the extra hours were worth it in absolute terms. Since I rarely make optimal moves, though, I'm usually satisfied with at least coming out of a venture with anything beneficial.

Here, I learned that 1) when I have large blocks of time to concentrate, I can pull together a largish project fairly rapidly and 2) I really enjoy working on the sort of work involved in that particular project.

While it probably would have been better to work on one of my own projects if I was going temporarily neglect my family a bit, knowing these things is helpful.