"Because your flight to Decatur had a layover, there will be now 10 more raindrops in a freak Tamil Nadu downpour in 2109"
What we really need to fight global warming is for Taco Bell to list projected methane emissions on its menu.
Turning humanity's greatest collective action problem into an issue of personal choice that simultaneously serves as an ad campaign for a preening tech company is the most American solution to climate change possible short of just shooting bullets into the sky Yosemite Sam-style.
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Meanwhile on this site we're locked in some kind of conceptual battle over @davidshor Thought when the actual Democratic governing strategy, almost a year after winning power, is "do nothing". I'd like to at least see a robust defense of that by a true believer.
Our political leaders created a huge buildup to bills that were supposed to make the New Deal look like chump change, went all-in on debt ceiling drama, and then just said "meh" about it all. That seems like a bigger political emergency than the specific content of these policies
At the moment we have a situation where a former Facebook product manager is advising a Facebook-reliant Congress on how to regulate an industry whose irredeemable business model she saw no problem with for eight years or more. And now the Facebook Supreme Court will hear all!
A key policy question is whether the surveillance advertising business model is intrinsically harmful or just needs lots of guard rails around it. You're not going to hear the first point of view articulated by anyone who worked for years at these companies, by definition.
This is pretty great. The undercover FBI agent you're trying to sell nuclear secrets to has asked you to leave a memory card in a specific location, but you're no fool. So to avoid getting caught, you bring your wife to stand next to you and keep a lookout while you crime.
The summary of the email exchanges is pretty great:
FBI: plz put the crime data in a location we picked
Criminal: lol no way. I'll upload it.
FBI: no we need it on a card.
Criminal: OK but I'll pick the place. Also I've never crimed before
FBI: No plz use our place.
Criminal: OK
I guess this guy's long drives *with his wife* to deliver classified information to a location an internet stranger told him to use gave this guy a lot of time to overthink how to safely communicate with that amazingly helpful stranger in the future. There is a parable here.
To be clear, I am 100% on board with the possibility that Tether is a massive fraud. But there's a broader context of shenanigans here that is underreported. For example, consider the way Chinese stocks are listed on US exchanges.
When you buy a Chinese stock on a US exchange, you're not buying shares of that company, but a Variable Interest Entity incorporated in the Cayman Islands. This VIE is a smoke-and-mirrors entity that has no enforceable relationship with the Chinese giant, and is illegal in China.
But because it is convenient for everyone, this flimsy and very shady looking fiction has worked as a way to duct-tape Chinese companies to US capital markets. If you're a freshly arrived Martian just learning about money, it doesn't look much different from something like Tether
Also likely plenty of oil to be discovered under those ice sheets, so the defrosting of Antarctica will be a virtuous cycle.
Big Climatology doesn't want you to remember that global warming will not only unlock an entire new continent, but solve a whole host of currently intractable social problems. Want a more equitable Senate and an expanded Bay Area with lots of room for new homes? Burn that coal!
I've been in mostly violent agreement with @smdiehl and others who call out cryptocurrency and its descendants for what they are—an end run around financial regulation at best, a massive fraud at worst. We all agree it makes no sense as a technology. But one thing worries me:
The culture around NFTs and other cryptowoo is genuinely vibrant and interesting. People have an enthusiasm and fearlessness about trying stuff that reminds the dinosaurs still among us of the early web days. This is especially true for young people just arriving on the scene.
The web itself, meanwhile, is sterile and moribund. There's nothing fun or weird around that doesn't get immediately co-opted, and there's certainly no DIY or collaborative culture of making cool things. You can play with the toys Google or Amazon gives you, big whoop.