Share this page!

Jay Owens Profile picture
Twitter logo
Nov 12 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
The collapse of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fraud is looking quite spicy for journalism.

1. Vox’s Future Perfect vertical, which took SBF money to shill for SBF ideology
2. Matt Yglesias & his whole “We must suck up to the billionaires to save the world” spiel.
3. New publication @semafor, for which SBF was one of the investors providing $25M funding.

(Did we have expectations of integrity there? Or was it clear comfort-the-rich centrism from the off? Not sure.)

ft.com/content/3010c8…
4. ProPublica’s $5M for pandemic preparedness reporting less directly buying influence — but nonetheless you are supposed to do due diligence on the source of donor funds, and when the answer is at-best “a Ponzi scheme”…
The spicy summing-up:
“But that’s our Substack boys for you.” 🌶🔥
PS This is what @voxdotcom were publishing as of Thursday, about why it’s net positive that social goods should be funded by the largesse of billionaires…

vox.com/future-perfect…
A lil paragraph in it about how billion dollar fraud is “far from ideal” but, mm, no real reckoning with what the fuck kind of client-journalism they think they’re doing.
vox.com/future-perfect…
PPS Yglesias co-founded Vox, btw, though he left quite loudly in 2020.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Jay Owens

Jay Owens Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @hautepop

Jay Owens Profile picture
Nov 12
sorry I am loving the FTX / EA (effective altruism) meltdown.

you don't get sentences like this on mastodon:
or receipts like this:
The particular irony of the We Are Extremely Clever Club having a $120K essay prize for self-criticism and finding blindspots in their own thought...

In which the one post about, "Crypto might be a conflict of interest" medium.com/@sven_rone/the…

...was downvoted into oblivion.
Read 5 tweets
Jay Owens Profile picture
Jul 4, 2019
Research shows that awarding formal land titles to local communities and indigenous groups can protect forests.

Read alongside that study that says that planting trees might save the planet, yes?

via @jnoisecat
pnas.org/content/early/…
The study in question:

A new satellite imaging study suggests that forest restoration “isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” — says Prof Tom Crowther at ETH Zürich, who led the research
theguardian.com/environment/20…
The challenge is that just planting trees doesn’t necessarily work

Just look at the Great Green Wall scheme

“If all the trees that had been planted in the Sahara since the early 1980s had survived, it would look like Amazonia.”
—Chris Reij

It does not.
smithsonianmag.com/science-nature…
Read 10 tweets
Jay Owens Profile picture
Jun 13, 2019
Many of you shared or read the VICE article '‘High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End’ Within 30 Years’ - based on a report from Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, an Australian think tank.

This was misleading & needs some caveats
1. "The "report" is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper. It's from some sort of "think tank" who can basically write what they like," says Prof. Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre & University of Exeter

(See annotations here)
hyp.is/IKIg7IqhEemxHQ…
This happened similarly with Jem Bendell's 'Deep adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy' paper (2018), which prophesised "inevitable", "near-term" social collapse -- & got hundreds of thousands of downloads.

Rejected by peer reviewers, who called for "major revisions"
Read 23 tweets
Jay Owens Profile picture
May 22, 2019
Designers, preach to us once again how you’re the voice of conscience & ethics in tech cos?

Engineers don’t write voice responses... This is UX design, and it stinks.
“But it responds to a user need! Research shows at least 5% of interactions with a voice assistant are sexually explicit.”*

“Go boil your head.”

* theguardian.com/technology/201…
It’s all just so nakedly male fantasy about how they’d like women to respond to unasked-for sexual comments.

That belief women are flattered by this shit. The desire that, if you refuse to acquiesce, you’ll say “Sorry” for spoiling their fun.

Get therapy.
Read 9 tweets
Jay Owens Profile picture
Jan 18, 2019
Newsletters I read, a list:

1. @Matt_Muir's Web Curios

"Hold your breath as I raise you by the ankle and dunk you bodily into this murky, digital Styx, imbuing you forever with the power of webspaff like some sort of Poundland Achilles of modernity."
imperica.com/en/web-curios-…
Read Web Curios for:
- Voice
- Internet culture
- Everything that's happened on social media in the past 7 days
- Web games & interactive stuff
- Best longreads list anywhere. Particularly astute radar for sensitive & standout essays about gender, sexuality, bodies, relationships
2. The Interface by @CaseyNewton

Everything that's happened in tech & social media in the past 24 hours. Strong on Kremlinology and the whole the platforms vs. politics debate.
Read it for: links AND analysis. Useful.
getrevue.co/profile/caseyn…
Read 29 tweets
Jay Owens Profile picture
Dec 1, 2018
The Concept Creep of ‘Emotional Labour’

Arlie Hochschild, the sociologist who invented the term, says it’s specifically about managing your emotions.

Remembering the kids’ schedules & your mother-in-law’s birthday? That’s just regular cognitive labour.
theatlantic.com/family/archive…
“There’s no doubt that the unpaid, expected, and unacknowledged work of keeping households and relationships running smoothly falls disproportionately on women. But that doesn’t make it emotional labor. Organizing to-do lists and planning family Christmases are just labor.”
Also, emotional labour is also not necessarily oppressive or “bad”

Hochschild’s focus is on whether the labour is alienating. But it can also be fun!

“If you’re the one that people are turning to for advice … Chances are you’re gratified at being able to help people.”
Read 16 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Send Email!

:(