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Edward Ongweso Jr Profile picture
Edward Ongweso Jr
“like a terrorist attacking an innocent family” - Soylent founder | tech+labor+crypto @motherboard | co-host @machinekillspod
Apr 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
been reading a book where John brown’s raid succeeded, the south became an independent Blaxk nation, and the world is socialist—WHAT COULDVE BEEN *Black
Apr 4 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Axie Infinity is NOT digital sharecropping. It's just an agreement for an investor to rent a primary digital asset (NFTs) to a worker so they can produce a secondary digital asset (tokens) in exchange for the investor getting a significant cut of the secondary digital assets. One point that was raised is that it doesn't seem players are going into debt. But they are. The managers. Some who poured all their money into a paltry number of NFTs, some who have pooled money with others, some who were former scholars, etc. they're all fucked
Apr 4 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Axie Infinity is hailed as the crown jewel of the play-to-earn world. But after spending months speaking to players, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s little more than a digital sharecropping system. vice.com/en/article/88g… To play Axie Infinity, you must buy NFTs & use them to generate tokens. Players too poor to afford NFTs borrow them from “managers” in exchange for as much as 75% of tokens. As the game’s NFT trading & token prices have crashed, everyone’s been screwed. vice.com/en/article/88g…
Mar 10 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
? content moderation policies on the largest social media platforms are something else huh
Dec 31, 2021 • 26 tweets • 15 min read
One of my favorite parts of this year has been working on This Machine Kills podcast (@machinekillspod) with @jathansadowski & @braunestahl as we analyze technology with a Luddite framework AND develop it in real-time, so here is a thread of some of my fav episodes this year: Our episode with TMK science correspondent @_danielle_carr diving into her review of Carl Zimmer’s A PLANET OF VIRUS which looks at the genre of popular science writing & its inherent anti-political nature. We talk about EPISTEMOLOGY, SCIENCE, and IDEOLOGY soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…
Nov 23, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I’m gonna rewrite the tribulation force in a setting where a blockchain is used to make sure everyone has the mark of the beast sorry the Left Behind series but if u know u know
Nov 21, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
hard to escape the conclusion that tech workers should be sabotaging their companies (or leaving the door open for sabotage a bit wider for others), especially as the companies swallow up more of our lives and adopt messaging strategies aimed at defending monopolies as desirable i am always surprised at how little sabotage goes on, not that it’s non-existent but that our rickety system doesn’t have suffer more internal attacks. maybe that’s a testament to the socialization and propaganda and screening these companies/industries
Nov 1, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I’m going to personally take away people’s dishwashers gawker.com/culture/agains… A lot of people saying that it’s hard to do dishes if you are working A Real Job, this is true. This is why you make ur kids do them.
Oct 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Colin Powell taught me it’s okay to fabricate evidence in Model UN. What did he teach you? you’re right I’m gonna self-crit rn
Oct 17, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is a great column on the lies perpetuated by Uber/Lyft but we must never forget that for over 10 years the greatest asset the gig economy had was a tech media that uncritically repeated and exaggerated its claims. nytimes.com/2021/10/17/opi… It’s a fact that if not for being underwritten by venture capital, the unprofitable & inefficient firms that dominate the “gig economy” wouldn’t exist. It’s also a fact that non-labor coverage of these companies was obsequious and key to their “success” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Oct 4, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Facebook service outage is really a great data point for the argument that we should not have a global social media platform that dominates multiple lines of communication actoss various countries and regions Probably not a good idea to have a system where many people cannot communicate with each other or the world because of a *squints at notes* server configuration error, according to the company
Oct 3, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
have you read a dumber idea? i know i know the headline is a bit hyperbolic of the argument but i read the argument and i do not like the argument
Sep 18, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
YES HAHA YESS Goodbye Twitter time to read
Jul 15, 2021 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
found my new favorite thing
Jul 13, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
my man posted the fucking time/date/location like you’ve gotta RSVP Image Give them a raise so they don’t feel the need to do shit like this if so
Jun 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Just realized I’ve been eating and cooking w duck eggs not chicken eggs for weeks Is there any difference? Probably not!
Jun 14, 2021 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
After spending a few years wading through all sorts of bullshit concerning the "gig economy," I've put together a glossary of sorts: a guide aimed at translating key buzzwords, phrases, and ideas regularly deployed to legitimize and normalize gig work. vice.com/en/article/pkb… The inspiration for this was @_KarenHao's great glossary that decoded how Big Tech talked about AI ethics. There's a lot of propaganda we carry around because gig firms were so successful in their first decade of PR, but step by step we can purge it all! technologyreview.com/2021/04/13/102…
May 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Apartheid is bad except in the United States and Israel, where it’s actually incredibly complex, nuanced, and is not simply rooted in the fact they are incredibly racist settler colony societies lol stfu
Apr 25, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is worse than the French body that decides what words will enter their language and in what form Incredibly low-energy. Most words are fake until they’re not, imagine getting mad about this
Feb 10, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The international reporting on the gig economy is really just some of the best. Almost impossible for any trace of homegrown PR narratives to thrive for a second when confronted with the even greater exploitation that typifies how Uber (Grab, Didi, etc.) operate anywhere else. In the past month, here is just a taste: we’ve got this pretty fascinating dive into China’s grocery delivery wars restofworld.org/2021/chinas-gr…
Feb 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Jeff Bezos taught me it's okay to support ICE. He taught me it's okay to steal at least $67.1 million in tips from your drivers. Jeff Bezos taught me it's okay to spy on your workers with the Pinkertons. He taught me it's okay to create hellish working conditions & fight unions. Jeff Bezos taught me it's okay to refuse to end oil and gas exploration contracts. He taught me it's okay to create surveillance technology and embed it in every part of your home. Jeff Bezos taught me it's okay to create racist facial recognition technology.