it's one of god's little ironies that after all our teenage idolizing and striving the coolest people we'll ever meet are our kids.

i really miss having a place where you could at a glance get a sense of what’s really going on in the world.

like, right now on the QSite, trends include “Because Elon”, “Even Elon”, “Musk”, and “So Elon”. along with “Matt Taibbi” and “Grimes” who are trending for their roles in dramas involving Elon.

you really can stay in touch with what’s important over there.

you have to love the people who are wrong about everything because otherwise you will just be too alone.

@Yaneznaiu welcome!

“the platforms always aimed to reconfigure sociality into something more consumable.” @robhorning https://robhorning.substack.com/p/identitatszwang ht @Jonathanglick

"The word 'neoliberalism' is much misused. We might, however, attach that label to the valorization of the goods of effectiveness over those of excellence - of winning at all costs over performing well." #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2023/04/devaluing-excellence.html #ViaRSS

[new draft post] Two parties make us stupid https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/04/21/two-parties-make-us-stupid/index.html

i still spend about 90% less time in indoor public spaces than i did pre-2020.

which i don’t like, at all. i don’t work in coworking spaces and cafés anymore, i mostly restrict eating out to eating outside, etc.

i feel much more isolated and stuck at home than i used to. i want everywhere to verifiably provide to very good ventilation. i think of close indoor air now like untreated sewage.

an interesting observation in this piece by @radleybalko about GOP respect for localism and the rights of communities to govern themselves rather then be subject to the whims of some distant government is the attention paid to institutional design, ensuring accountability through clear targets for coercion and intimidation in the public interest. https://open.substack.com/pub/radleybalko/p/meet-the-nutty-tennessee-republicans

so over on the QSite i saw “big guy” trending and was curious. the two top tweets offer happy birthday wishes to the “big guy”, above slide shows cycling through adoring photographs of adolf hitler.

i mean, why on earth would advertisers be leaving?

basically the legacy elitist blue check was just made more elitist, it now goes a much smaller number of accounts, the celebrities that elon wants to impress.

maybe capital allies with those who would render the state oppressive on social issues not merely to attract electorally useful idiots, but also so that factions which otherwise might be inclined to support state power in order to address distributional problems become tempted to adopt a “fight the power”, adversarial view of the state.

For students at #NewCollege, the Florida public liberal arts college that #RonDeSantis is trying to convert to Christianity or something, the "center of the universe" is Palm Court.

Palm Court is an almost-checker-board of Palm Trees, the heart of a dormitory complex designed by IM Pei, the most extraordinary place that I ever lived.

Proconsul Corcoran now plans to evacuate students from that whole side of campus (which also includes newer dorms and the student center). https://ncfcatalyst.com/admitted-student-day-ushers-in-a-new-era-for-new-college/

"we’ve allowed companies to steal our culture and rent it back to us." #quoderat http://www.technologyasnature.com/pyra-c/ #ViaRSS

is prompt engineering safe from ai automation?

mischievous high-school kids in Florida are going to have so much fun bringing up topics their teachers could get in trouble for talking about.

undisguised vindictiveness is a hallmark of the contemporary right. https://journa.host/@dell/110227348408885700

Margaritaville feels awfully uptight these days.

what twitter address do you write to get your free 💩 emoji?

when you say you are asking nicely, you are not.