I tried to express some of the same sentiments regarding moderation, although not nearly as clearly, on the ilx twitter thread
Ted gets it
― mh, Monday, 18 December 2017 17:20 (six years ago) link
Yeah, this is a good essay
― Google Murray Blockchain (kingfish), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 00:06 (six years ago) link
Excellent
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 01:42 (six years ago) link
ted chiang i luv u
― dipso inferno (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 15:36 (six years ago) link
it's a good essay until the conclusion which is "why can't capitalism just be a bit nicer?"
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 15:53 (six years ago) link
^Exactly
― Volvo Twilight (p-dog), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 17:58 (six years ago) link
enh i dunno if it’s ted chiang’s job to come up with a cure for the illness he’s diagnosed
― dipso inferno (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 18:06 (six years ago) link
one of chiang's first short stories is a duel between flowers for algernon dudes who keep upping their smart drugs until one of them becomes a messiah, so basically his cure is elon musk and jeff bezos should be popping nootropics until one of them saves the planet.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:05 (six years ago) link
can we have them popping opiates until both of them leave the planet instead pls
― dipso inferno (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:12 (six years ago) link
given their private little space race they've got going, they're certainly trying!
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:28 (six years ago) link
I think the problem is that he kind of does. Either way, it's a good essay.
― Leaghaidh am brón an t-anam bochd (dowd), Thursday, 21 December 2017 00:16 (six years ago) link
hey everyone’s fav juice entrepreneur is back!
The most prominent proponent of raw water is Doug Evans, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.Before he could order raw water on demand, Mr. Evans went “spring hunting” with friends. This has become more challenging lately: The closest spring around San Francisco has recently been cut off by landslides, so reaching it means crossing private property, which he does under cover of night.
Before he could order raw water on demand, Mr. Evans went “spring hunting” with friends. This has become more challenging lately: The closest spring around San Francisco has recently been cut off by landslides, so reaching it means crossing private property, which he does under cover of night.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/dining/raw-water-unfiltered.html
― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Sunday, 31 December 2017 19:34 (six years ago) link
lol @ "raw water".
I hike, so get to drink from natural springs in the mountains and it is always great water, but lake water is just as "raw" as spring water and it is nowhere near as good. hell, if this guy wants really RAW stuff he should gather water from small streams that run through pastures where cattle graze. I guarantee that would be very lively water!
― A is for (Aimless), Sunday, 31 December 2017 19:41 (six years ago) link
raw water is a real clarion call to roll out the guillotines
― pee-wee and the power men (bizarro gazzara), Sunday, 31 December 2017 19:53 (six years ago) link
or what SZ said: "Little known fact: Roman shopkeepers were using the terms mouth feel and flavor profile to describe aqua right before the empire collapsed."
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 31 December 2017 20:02 (six years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTmxwEpWkAAsp9l.jpg
― mookieproof, Monday, 15 January 2018 22:16 (six years ago) link
abysmal real names
― Choco Blavatsky (seandalai), Monday, 15 January 2018 22:31 (six years ago) link
that’s a risk i’m willing to take xp
― grim-n-gritty hooty reboot (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 15 January 2018 22:31 (six years ago) link
As a mixed martial arts fighter, Mr. Buttram said he would fight for a couple hundred bucks, sometimes a few thousand, and worked security at a start-up, but his main hobbies were reading 4chan and buying vintage pornography, passions that exposed him to cryptocurrency.
― mookieproof, Monday, 15 January 2018 22:44 (six years ago) link
those north korean ballistic missiles can’t come fast enough tbh
― grim-n-gritty hooty reboot (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 15 January 2018 22:49 (six years ago) link
From last week:
https://respectfulinsolence.com/2018/01/08/latest-trend-fashionable-nonsense-raw-water/
― Crazy Display Name Haver (kingfish), Monday, 15 January 2018 23:42 (six years ago) link
welcome to the future, where the rich live on mars and no-one on earth has a job but, thanks to elon musk, everyone has a flamethrower
https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/boring_company_flamethrower_2048x2048.png?w=738
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/27/elon-musks-boring-co-flamethrower-is-real-500-and-up-for-pre-order/
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 29 January 2018 12:31 (six years ago) link
Musk’s Boring Company is literally a company focused on tunnel boring, but it seems like it’ll be a while before it has revenue or significant results (even if it’s already digging test tunnels). To fund the project until then, selling weird stuff with the company’s logo to Muskheads everywhere seems like a decent plan.
― El Tomboto, Monday, 29 January 2018 12:39 (six years ago) link
imagine being so invested in cult-of-personality vaporware that you're willing to drop 500 bucks on a flamethrower that doesn't even throw flames well enough to let you pretend to be the doof warrior from fury road
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 29 January 2018 12:45 (six years ago) link
I don’t have much use for a flamethrower.
― Jeff, Monday, 29 January 2018 13:22 (six years ago) link
his bore's like vapor, so buy this flame...and take your money
― Righteous wax chaperone, rotating Wingdings (Doctor Casino), Monday, 29 January 2018 13:43 (six years ago) link
the boring company has sold all of its 20,000 flamethrowers in less than 24 hours fyi
if this means just one silicon valley asshole dies by immolation it'll all have been worth it
― your skeleton is ready to hatch (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 29 January 2018 16:53 (six years ago) link
You could use it to melt the ice on your front walkway, but it would just refreeze again later. Other than that I am stumped for a practical use for that flaming contraption.
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 30 January 2018 02:09 (six years ago) link
melt ice, you say
pic.twitter.com/NyjqDrj431— "ascetic house" (@AsceticHouse) January 28, 2018
― mh, Tuesday, 30 January 2018 02:17 (six years ago) link
Oh boy, Uber but for doula
https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/doula-drama
― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Thursday, 1 February 2018 22:05 (six years ago) link
there's one born every minute
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 1 February 2018 22:15 (six years ago) link
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/peter-thiels-unfortunate-world-on-the-know-it-alls-by-noam-cohen/#!
― j., Sunday, 11 February 2018 20:19 (six years ago) link
I’ll read that when I’m feeling stronger
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 11 February 2018 22:05 (six years ago) link
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/technology/his-2020-campaign-message-the-robots-are-coming.html
“All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society,” Mr. Yang, 43, said over lunch at a Thai restaurant in Manhattan last month, in his first interview about his campaign. In just a few years, he said, “we’re going to have a million truck drivers out of work who are 94 percent male, with an average level of education of high school or one year of college.”“That one innovation,” he continued, “will be enough to create riots in the street. And we’re about to do the same thing to retail workers, call center workers, fast-food workers, insurance companies, accounting firms.”
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 13 February 2018 13:06 (six years ago) link
pretty scary they are going to start automating call center workers
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 13 February 2018 13:10 (six years ago) link
lol
tom i'm kinda eh about that stuff. 90% of the workforce used to be in farming. driving trucks is dull. working in fast food is dull. there is no career path in any of that stuff and never has been. old jobs will close but there are new jobs that need desperately need doing i.e. nursing
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 13 February 2018 13:26 (six years ago) link
Paul has only received one community strike against his channel, for the video he uploaded on Dec. 31. The other videos, as tasteless as they may be, aren’t enough to violate the company’s code of conduct. Instead, YouTube has removed monetization privileges from his channel and placed an age gate (a tool that prevents users under the age of 18 from watching a video) on the vlog that contained footage of Paul tasing dead rats.“What you think is tasteless is not necessarily what someone else would think is tasteless,” Wojcicki said.There’s no denying that Paul is still a top creator on the platform. With more than 16 million subscribers and growing, Paul may also a financial asset to the company — or he will be, once advertising is restored on his video. YouTube still collects 40 percent of all advertising revenue made from videos, and with millions of eyes on Paul’s every vlog, the company appears to be investing in a sure moneymaker. The company denied earlier reports that YouTube restored ads on Paul’s channel 72 hours after the suspension was instituted, pointing to a glitch that was causing some users to see ads displayed.https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/13/17006890/logan-paul-ban-suicide-forest-youtube-susan-wojcicki
“What you think is tasteless is not necessarily what someone else would think is tasteless,” Wojcicki said.
There’s no denying that Paul is still a top creator on the platform. With more than 16 million subscribers and growing, Paul may also a financial asset to the company — or he will be, once advertising is restored on his video. YouTube still collects 40 percent of all advertising revenue made from videos, and with millions of eyes on Paul’s every vlog, the company appears to be investing in a sure moneymaker. The company denied earlier reports that YouTube restored ads on Paul’s channel 72 hours after the suspension was instituted, pointing to a glitch that was causing some users to see ads displayed.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/13/17006890/logan-paul-ban-suicide-forest-youtube-susan-wojcicki
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 13 February 2018 13:46 (six years ago) link
unfortunately nobody asked her if she finds filming suicide victims or tasering dead rats tasteful
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 13 February 2018 13:48 (six years ago) link
could just as easily post this to the rolling apocalypse thread but there's a good longread in the grauniad today about peter thiel and other silicon valley assholes' obsession with using new zealand as their supervillain lair/doomsday bunker, possibly inspired by a batshit libertarian screed published at the turn of the millennium
The book’s 400-odd pages of near-hysterical orotundity can roughly be broken down into the following sequence of propositions:1) The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools.2) The rise of the internet, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, will make it impossible for governments to intervene in private transactions and to tax incomes, thereby liberating individuals from the political protection racket of democracy.3) The state will consequently become obsolete as a political entity.4) Out of this wreckage will emerge a new global dispensation, in which a “cognitive elite” will rise to power and influence, as a class of sovereign individuals “commanding vastly greater resources” who will no longer be subject to the power of nation-states and will redesign governments to suit their ends.The Sovereign Individual is, in the most literal of senses, an apocalyptic text. Davidson and Rees-Mogg present an explicitly millenarian vision of the near future: the collapse of old orders, the rising of a new world. Liberal democracies will die out, and be replaced by loose confederations of corporate city-states. Western civilisation in its current form, they insist, will end with the millennium. “The new Sovereign Individual,” they write, “will operate like the gods of myth in the same physical environment as the ordinary, subject citizen, but in a separate realm politically.” It’s impossible to overstate the darkness and extremity of the book’s predictions of capitalism’s future; to read it is to be continually reminded that the dystopia of your darkest insomniac imaginings is almost always someone else’s dream of a new utopian dawn.
1) The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools.
2) The rise of the internet, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, will make it impossible for governments to intervene in private transactions and to tax incomes, thereby liberating individuals from the political protection racket of democracy.
3) The state will consequently become obsolete as a political entity.
4) Out of this wreckage will emerge a new global dispensation, in which a “cognitive elite” will rise to power and influence, as a class of sovereign individuals “commanding vastly greater resources” who will no longer be subject to the power of nation-states and will redesign governments to suit their ends.
The Sovereign Individual is, in the most literal of senses, an apocalyptic text. Davidson and Rees-Mogg present an explicitly millenarian vision of the near future: the collapse of old orders, the rising of a new world. Liberal democracies will die out, and be replaced by loose confederations of corporate city-states. Western civilisation in its current form, they insist, will end with the millennium. “The new Sovereign Individual,” they write, “will operate like the gods of myth in the same physical environment as the ordinary, subject citizen, but in a separate realm politically.” It’s impossible to overstate the darkness and extremity of the book’s predictions of capitalism’s future; to read it is to be continually reminded that the dystopia of your darkest insomniac imaginings is almost always someone else’s dream of a new utopian dawn.
full thing here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
― albondigas con gas (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 15 February 2018 14:56 (six years ago) link
i'm aware i've said this before a few times on ilx but jesus christ the obsession of these billionaire assholes in securing their own wellbeing in the face of a threatened societal collapse which they are ideally-placed to help mitigate is just breathtakingly evil
― albondigas con gas (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 15 February 2018 14:59 (six years ago) link
more proof, if any were needed, that in order to become a billionaire asshole, one must already be breathtakingly evil before attaining that eminence
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, 15 February 2018 19:05 (six years ago) link
tru
― albondigas con gas (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 15 February 2018 19:11 (six years ago) link
(isn't new zealand earthquake-prone?)
( yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_New_Zealand#2010%E2%80%93present )
― koogs, Thursday, 15 February 2018 19:24 (six years ago) link
ugh ugh ugh https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/australia/school-tech-lumineer-academy-susan-wu.html
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Thursday, 1 March 2018 08:39 (six years ago) link
1/ VERY interesting tidbit from an ex CEO of major tech co.Tech giants are opening offices in new cities as much to RETAIN valley talent as RECRUIT new. New office opens and the ratio of valley employees asking to move to actual job openings is 11:1— Josh Wolfe (@wolfejosh) March 2, 2018
they're leaving
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Saturday, 3 March 2018 01:23 (six years ago) link
I used to get sent to the principal's office for disrupting education.
― mick signals, Saturday, 3 March 2018 01:51 (six years ago) link
yeah basically none of the google people I know work in MV anymore (well, ok, a lot of them never did - but certainly not because they're DC based govt relations staffers)
that reminds me that someone brought this to my attention recently - an amazon intranet page apparently drove a shitload of traffic to a local indie in NoVa: https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/20/amazon-employees-are-very-interested-in-a-particular-article-about-arlington/
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 3 March 2018 01:51 (six years ago) link
google is pretty much taking over chelsea in nyc
― mookieproof, Saturday, 3 March 2018 01:56 (six years ago) link
a class of sovereign individuals “commanding vastly greater resources” who will no longer be subject to the power of nation-states and will redesign governments to suit their ends
have these ppl never read hobbes
― j., Saturday, 3 March 2018 03:26 (six years ago) link
i'm going to wager that a great many of them have not
i've never read hobbes btw
― had (crüt), Saturday, 3 March 2018 04:01 (six years ago) link