you have to love the people who are wrong about everything because otherwise you will just be too alone.
@laprice IBGUBG, Planet Earth edition.
@22 I would, though my aversion to indoor public space would still be limiting.
@CriticalCupcake turn guantanimo into a daycare center.
@Yaneznaiu absolutely!
@Yaneznaiu welcome!
“the platforms always aimed to reconfigure sociality into something more consumable.” @robhorning https://robhorning.substack.com/p/identitatszwang ht @Jonathanglick
@mazdam Britain is not really a multiparty system. I mean sure, there are multiple parties, but it’s first past the post, which strongly privileges a major two. Brexit is a different problem, though downstream from the two-party binary which there like here turns roughly half the public whack (chose which half). But a 50% plus epsilon ad hoc referendum was also an unforced error. 1/
@mazdam Israel has two big problems: the one I cite in the piece about governing coalition dynamics, and a system that makes room for very small parties that can take outsize advantage of those coalitional dynamics. Better parliamentary democracies have voting systems that encourage multiple but not tiny, usually 4-6ish parties, so that the kingmaker in a coalition is usually not some tiny, potentially radical, sliver. 2/
@mazdam Voting systems that yield multiple medium-size reduce, but don’t eliminate the binary dynamic introduced by having the parliament form the government. /fin
"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
@acronymrequired Maybe so. Then promoting a (joint) factional interest above a broad public interest, still stupid from the perspective of the interests of the full polity but a bit of a different cause than the one I suggest: rather than bitter struggle, tacit collusion.
[new draft post] Two parties make us stupid https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/04/21/two-parties-make-us-stupid/index.html
@GerardMacDonell I definitely bristle at colds more, after spending much of the pandemic entirely free of them. But with a kid indoors at school every day, we've not been able to avoid them entirely.
@22 Part of why we left the Bay Area is, post-pandemic, we spent most of our time at home, and home had to be for us a very small and cluttered thing there. Prepandemic, our tiny home didn't bother me much. I was usually out in that urban bustle.
(It did bother my wife more even then. The city could be my home, but she values private, domestic space a lot more than I do. Even in our bigger suburban Florida apartment, I find literal home pretty depressing.)
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
@dharmik absolutely. there should be spaces for Nazis, and each of us should be able to participate in those spaces or not however we see fit. but i probably don’t want to contribute whatever little wit i offer to places that put Hitler montages at the top of their trends. i might listen in just to know, but i’d not let myself enrich that kind of scene.
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/