“Israel today is dynamiting the edifice of global norms built after 1945, which has been tottering since the catastrophic and still unpunished war on terror and Vladimir Putin’s revanchist war in Ukraine. The profound rupture we feel today between the past and the present is a rupture in the moral history of the world since the ground zero of 1945 – the history in which the Shoah has been for many years the central event and universal reference.” #PankajMishra https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n05/pankaj-mishra/the-shoah-after-gaza
"Here’s the hidden truth of education: You don’t know what you’re preparing for. You don’t know. Your teacher doesn’t know. Your school doesn’t know. Your future employer doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Not really." @inthehands https://innig.net/teaching/liberal-arts-manifesto
ht @llimllib
"Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent." @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/
when i find myself elongated and dripping off a roof it’s a miracle.
A great profile of my sister #AdelleWaldman, whose new book "Help Wanted" is about to come out.
by #EmilyGould
https://www.thecut.com/article/adelle-waldman-help-wanted-interview.html
oh thank god. https://mastodon.social/@macrumors/112022245140125726
not everybody has a price, but everybody is mortal, and their successors and heirs are often much more reasonable.
no one should be powerful except as part of constituting everyone.
i feel therefore i am.
@akhilrao there are questions of control that concern me. NASA always used private contractors, but NASA seemed, at least to the ordinary layperson, to remain in control — they bid out to contractors, and could shift to others. it seems like we are entering an era where SpaceX holds a monopoly on core competences that continued space development and exploration requires. that terrifies me. and a good track record so far is like Amazon being low margin and great for consumers, in the beginning.
when someone is fishing for compliment, take the bait.
who would be your dream-team cast for a reality production of Sartre’s “No Exit”?
@gulovsen soon they will offer fax machine as the new muzak.
@admitsWrongIfProven i think to the degree people are conscious that their wealth comes from some sort of predation — think the Sacklers, or the PE looters @pluralistic writes about, or doctors knowingly over-recommending procedures, etc — they hold their victims in contempt, as being a lesser kind of person who might succumb to these kinds of things, and therefore deserving of what they get.
@admitsWrongIfProven @pluralistic lots of people become very wealthy in more abstract ways. a hedge-fund mogul who buys and sells only financial securities, while he might know their's oil-and-gas or tobacco or whatever in his portfolio, mostly sees the money as coming from an opaque symbolic process. For this kind of rich person, sure, there's no need for contempt, disregard and cultivated ignorance are sufficient.
akshually, today is January 60!
you all think it's kind of fun, this February 29. but just wait until tomorrow, when it is February 30.
[new draft post] What you are doing right now https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/02/29/what-you-are-doing-right-now/index.html
try to build a world in which it's not worth the trouble to make a dick of yourself just to score a bit more green.
New candidates for the worst people in the world.
Reported by @scottsantens https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/
the idea of a "marketplace of ideas" is pretty compellingly rejected in the marketplace of ideas.