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26 Apr, 4 tweets, 1 min read
In general there is too much discussion of how Republicans plan to steal elections. and too little of their excellent prospects of winning them fairly by big margins. It feeds a comforting fantasy that we live in a deeply progressive country instead of a divided one.
Here's a fallacy I see pop up over and over. Yes, there are deep structural inequities in the electoral college, the way the Senate is designed, and so on. But you can't take Republican successes in that flawed system and calculate how they would "really" do in a fairer system
In such a reformed system, issues and tactics would necessarily change, and we might still lose. Democratic commentary today is a form of fantasy football where we convince ourselves we're the real winners if you factor in all the unfair stuff we face. It masks a political crisis
Anyway, good luck everyone! I couldn't be more delighted to be all about the bookmarking now

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Pinboard Profile picture
27 Apr
The work culture at rich tech companies (people read something upsetting in the news and want to discuss and 'process' it on company time) is so alien from most people's experience of work that it makes me despair for ever finding common ground with the actual working class
I remember an early Tech Solidarity meeting where a number of electricians joined us to talk about organizing. "What do you guys want?" they asked. The tech workers had no clear answer. "Well, a lot of us were getting electrocuted, so we started a union" the electricians said.
High-end tech jobs are like college that never ends. People want their dean of students and codes of conduct and for everything to be ultimately fair and properly adjudicated by the administrators. It makes the workforce extraordinarily passive, as students ultimately are
Read 4 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
23 Apr
When you wonder "why is [NEW FORMAT] suddenly a thing?", the dynamic is always the same. Early advertising is fantastically lucrative. Once the stampede to the format starts in earnest, the margin drops quickly, and the cycle will have to repeat. It's driven by novelty.
The motor on both sides of the ledger is hope. Writers/broadcasters hope they finally found an ad model that pays the bills without being hateful to the audience. Advertisers hope they have found a new model that leads to terrific engagement. But all that's left is a hangover
The long term results are more entrenched surveillance (since every new ad model needs a new story about why it's different and better) and a gold rush culture where nothing gets to put down roots because everyone moves to the next Klondike
Read 7 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
20 Apr
Apple's AirTag is a revolutionary technology that lets you attach a $40 dongle to items to discourage you from losing them
The invention of a costly free-range dongle with no device to attach to marks the apotheosis of a 30-year arc in Apple product design
Apple's war on grandparents continues with this fully touch-sensitive monstrosity with a Siri button on the side, for easy misclicking
Read 16 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
15 Apr
"Social audio app Clubhouse will let all six remaining users pay other creators starting Monday."
If Clubhouse's transition from unpaid conference call to 900 number goes smoothly, I look forward to their pivot to making unsolicited calls to potential users around dinnertime, cementing their hold on the 90's nostalgia market.
Clubhouse totally needs a modem channel, where people can type text messages at each other at 300 baud. Somebody please do this.
Read 4 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
14 Apr
It's striking how in all the discussion around pulling out of Afghanistan, there's been so little mention in the US media about how Afghans feel about it, or what it will mean for them. South Vietnam learned this lesson the hard way—when America is ready to go, boy do they bail.
There's the sunk cost fallacy—the fact that we've wasted 20 years on a stupid war is more reason to stop it, not less. But there's also an obligation you incur when you occupy a country for that long, to the people whose lives are intertwined with your presence, for good or bad
Missing from much discussion of the Middle East and Central Asia is the fact that it's full of intelligent human beings, with agency not a geopolitical chess board, and maybe talking and listening to them more would be a way out of the senseless futility of the last 20 years
Read 6 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
13 Apr
What the covid shot taught me is that every time I've been really sick in my life, it was my immune reaction that was making me feel like death warmed over, not whatever innocent virus I had previously blamed. I feel so betrayed. Why *was* I hitting myself?
The human immune system needs a ground-up rewrite to better reflect the needs of stakeholders. There's a quarter billion years of technical debt in mammalian immune response and it shows in the crufty design. And don't even get me started on blood clotting. Disruptors needed!
If human immunological memory used blockchain we wouldn't need these booster shots
Read 4 tweets

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