they are politicizing politics again.

"Rufo cares about the actual values that sustain a liberal vision of freedom and justice in same way that Israeli war-cabinet minister who calls for 'voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons' actually cares about humanitarianism." prospect.org/politics/2024-01-

Clever and wise are very different things.

Are there ActivityPub servers that permit posting of fulltext articles in HTML format?

We have heard too much from me.

Is "technical cantilevers" a better metaphor than "technical debt"? See luispedro.substack.com/p/techn

Inspired by @paninid, I was looking through some old documents. I found I wrote a letter to the old The New Republic in 2003 on Israel/Palestine.

It would satisfy no one today. Contemporary anti-Zionists might characterize it as patronizing, abrogating Palestinians' individual and national rights to immediate equality, foreseeing and accepting a degree of ethnic cleansing.

Contemporary Zionists would oppose it because it proposes eventual abandonment of the project of a Jewish state.

Photograph of the text of a letter to the editor.

It is too long to quote here, but I've posted plaintext at https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2003/TNR-Letter-To-The-Editor.txt Photograph of the text of a letter to the editor. It is too long to quote here, but I've posted plaintext at https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2003/TNR-Letter-To-The-Editor.txt

Institutional details really matter in systems that describe themselves as democratic. Different voting systems and organizational structures lead to radically different kinds of outcomes, despite allegedly expressing the consent and will of the very same demos.

See "Direct Elections for Labor Leaders Make for More Militant Unions" labornotes.org/2024/01/direct- via @40Years

instead of drill, baby, drill,
build, baby, build.

when circumstances demand it, heroism is to be encouraged and applauded.

but overall we wish to diminish, rather than increase, the frequency of heroism, by minimizing the occurrence of circumstances that would demand it.

@admitsWrongIfProven @realcaseyrollins I am with you! Wormholians may not stand for the office!

@admitsWrongIfProven @realcaseyrollins that's a fine way of thinking about things, but then "natural-born" would include everything, would be a meaningless restriction, right?

"With Scala, I did not have time to be bored, either because of involvement in FOSS, or because of the awesome projects I worked on at $work. It’s a language that has grown with me, and the ecosystem always provides something new to learn, or some new library to get excited about, while matching my aspirations."

@alexelcu captures much of how I feel. Scala is a very deep language, we are always discovering and teaching ourselves radically new things. I love that alexn.org/blog/2024/01/10/scal

if you were born by C-section, can you run for President?

An ability to put together gargantuan sums of capital is perhaps the only redeeming feature of what's left of our financial system. Why is it not financing a new engineering-centered competitor to Boeing and Airbus?

(I know. Perhaps there's a clue in that word "competitor". And Boeing, after all, found its current glories by transforming itself into what Wall Street wanted, they'd probably just want more of the same.)

you are entitled to your own pigeons, but you are not entitled to your own cats.

what if you suspend accounts you don't like, but magnanimously restore only those accounts people prominently make a fuss about — in the name of free speech, of course.

what effect is that practice going to have on speech broadly on the platform, beyond its most famous accounts?

journa.host/@w7voa/11172944192

ht @eilonwy

exciting news from the citadel of free speech.

Text, from Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer_ on Twitter):

There was a massive purge of journalists on Twitter. Steven Zetti of the Texas Observer and Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept. In addition, blogger Rob Rousseau, and podcast TrueAnonPod.

They also got zei squirrel and Liam Nissan, both shit posting accounts that were critical of Elon and Bill Ackman. Text, from Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer_ on Twitter): There was a massive purge of journalists on Twitter. Steven Zetti of the Texas Observer and Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept. In addition, blogger Rob Rousseau, and podcast TrueAnonPod. They also got zei squirrel and Liam Nissan, both shit posting accounts that were critical of Elon and Bill Ackman.

I too am experiencing degraded performance.

when you are young you revel in the carnality of the human condition.

when you are old you despair of its charnelity.