I would really like a "raw" web search engine, just an SQL interface to an as-comprehensive-as-possible index of links.
SELECT title, last_modified, url FROM index WHERE content is like '%otter%' and content is like '%Iowa%' ORDER BY...
The service could offer all kinds of algorithms in clever, ORDER BY functions, but I'd get to choose which in my query (and can always go with ORDER BY last_modified DESC if I wish).
the day you get over your imposter syndrome is the day you become an imposter.
[New Post] Betrayal https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9693.html
The Fed shouldn’t freak out over wage growth, but should work to keep it real by seeking (in cooperation with other agencies of government) profit margin compression.
Should the US just nationalize freight rail? Obviously, competition doesn’t meaningfully regulate the industry, when there is an effective duopoly in every region of the country. Absent market discipline, management from within is more effective at meeting social objectives than regulating clumsily from the outside. 1/
Certain “efficiencies” would be lost: The state could not employ workers on lean “PSR” terms. But that’s just another way of saying other stakeholders would have to bear costs now concentrated onto workers. And given the industry’s thick recent margins, the only stakeholder who need lose is the shareholders who would be cut off. We could make the industry better for both workers and shippers on shareholders’ and managers’ backs. Given how purely extractive they’ve become, why shouldn’t we? /fin
Are there instances whose local feeds you sample, besides your own?
Reading @doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen the agency issues with uncapped contingent contracting by the state are obvious. No one has an incentive to care how much the broad public pays in nickels and dimes for state-provided goods that don't rise to political prominence. Rather than whack-a-mole-ing fees, should agencies simply be forbidden from this form of contracting without literally a presidential waiver?
ht @Montag
if you let trade run imbalanced, a correlation between surplus and autocracy is predictable... https://twitter.com/interfluidity/status/1598033533800714241
(i'm still experimenting with how to manage the relationship between this new place and the old one. sorry!)
These feel like revolutionary times, but there is no revolutionary model. In the early postwar years, revolution often meant joining an international communist future. In the post-Cold-War years, it meant joining the liberal democratic end of history. Now? The arc of history doesn't know where it's going, so however inspiring the protest, it traces the trajectory of a boomerang.
@akhilrao "sample size" is a bit grand, since the "sample" begins biased and then is self-selected. but 84 accounts responded.
"On the Chinese web, searches for ‘A4’ and ‘white paper’ have been censored" ~Alec Ash https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/november/blank-sheets-of-paper ht @heidilifeldman @Cyberflaneurs
Now would be a great time to call your representative and urge them to vote for including seven paid sick days in the deal Congress is likely to impose on railroad workers. It’s really the least they can do in exchange for taking away workers’ right to strike for a better bargain.
see @ddayen https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1597780273470414848
screw the ferrari, what i’m jealous of is your tax system.
@ryanlcooper on “butter-smooth” taxation in the Faroe Islands. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/11/30/the-best-tax-system-on-earth/
Bernie Sanders perhaps saving Democrats from the absolute catastrophe that just throwing labor under the bus would be.
see birdsite https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1597752246564843520
A thread on the birdsite worth reading, a huge regression in public transparency. A world in which everywhere is the Cook Islands or the Caymans or Delaware or South Dakota is not a better world. https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588203439284225
Since it's "Giving Tuesday" here's my philanthropic advice: help people you know. 501(c)3 status doesn't make a recipient more worthy. Give to people and organizations that are a part of your life, to whom and from whom your relationship is more than just financial, about whom you will naturally remain informed. I won't say that giving money to arms-length philanthropies with professional fundraising staff is necessarily bad. I won't say it's good though.
if Congress imposes a deal upon them, would you support railroad workers if they chose to strike illegally?
(on birdsite the same poll from me came out 76.2% Yes, 23.8% No.)
the exercise of power can be embedded in what you seem to be ignoring (the supreme court does not hear the appeal) but that as a matter of obscure legal procedure you are actually undoing. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/opinion/supreme-court-decisions-vacated.html
“Here’s why I will never buy an HP printer again (this time for sure)” by Kevin Drum https://jabberwocking.com/heres-why-i-will-never-buy-an-hp-printer-again-this-time-for-sure/ // all the companies i loved in the nineties turned themselves into predators
“Hugh profits produced an enormous pool of money at the top of society, but precisely because the rich were getting so much, there was nowhere good to invest.” @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/economy/at-least-the-tech-winter-will-kill-off-some-zombie-companies/
