The Loaf Man

@loafman

Bread Oriented Stuff (but not entirely)

1,695 posts

When management knew, they generally did nothing until the fact that they had known was exposed. It is too soon to say what has changed, but this moment seems to mark a change in who is audible, which is to say, who is somebody.

[Easy Chair] | Nobody Knows, by Rebecca Solnit | Harper's Magazine

It is an old truism that knowledge is power. The inverse — that power is often ignorance — is rarely discussed.

[Easy Chair] | Nobody Knows, by Rebecca Solnit | Harper's Magazine

In the past, building a market required users, products, all that mess—farmers taking their plump pigs to market. What we have now is a means of spinning up any number of auctions, a method for the mass manufacture of middlemen. This is the destiny of Silicon Valley. And with ICOs and Bitcoin exchanges, we have a marketplace to value marketplaces. What in Galt’s name could be wrong with that? We’ve never (surveys vast tracts of empty Florida homes) had trouble before.

Bitcoin Is Ridiculous. Blockchain Is Dangerous

Britain’s misfortune is that matters of the greatest seriousness are now in the hands of basically unserious people.

LRB · William Davies · What are they after?

The reality is that in addition to the ideological and cultural forces behind Brexit, it is also happening thanks to the recklessness of individuals who see public life as an opportunity to show off

LRB · William Davies · What are they after?

No doubt men such as Johnson and Trump have always existed, but healthy political systems have ways of keeping them away from the highest echelons of power.

LRB · William Davies · What are they after?

Johnson is as close as British politics has to a Trump problem, and his seniority suggests that Trumpism has permeated our political culture more deeply than we like to admit. Trump may be a more acute case, but both men compel all around them to react to their idle remarks, mistakes and fantasies.

LRB · William Davies · What are they after?

Johnson approaches public life as a game in which he commits sackable offences as a way of demonstrating his unsackability.

LRB · William Davies · What are they after?

The political weather in Westminster has been made over the past two years by Boris Johnson, a man whose only apparent goal is to make the political weather.

LRB · William Davies · What are they after?

Yet it went from that to what it is now: a firehose from bedlam, an amplifier of every kind of human frailty and malice as well as a channel for “bots”, automated or semi-automated scripts designed to pump out propaganda. And the maddening thing is that, despite all that, conscientious journalists have to keep up with it just in case they miss a vital bit of breaking news.

How to get Twitter back on song? #NoMoreRetweets | John Naughton

One thing I’ve learned is that quality and focus, giving people an experience, a journey they can go on that goes deeper into one set of ideas, has become much more attractive.

An Interview with John Biewen | Podcast Review

When I thought of myself as a public radio producer, I never had any interest in creating a show or being a host. I just thought, “That’s what somebody else does. That’s not a strength of mine.” So when we created the CDS podcast, I thought we were going to make pieces and since I’m the only person here I guess I’m the host; I’ll go on and say something to introduce the piece. But it’s interesting then with something like Seeing White, where I actually found I really enjoyed figuring out how to frame these pieces and establishing a certain kind of tone and relationship to the audience. And so I’ve embraced that role of the podcast host.

An Interview with John Biewen | Podcast Review

Well, in a way, that’s right. CDS didn’t have an audio program to speak of. They had been really strong in photography and had a film festival and taught documentary writing. But they didn’t have anybody teaching audio courses.

An Interview with John Biewen | Podcast Review

Biewen has been traveling around the country presenting Seeing White, a special series of Scene on Radio, with Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika. Seeing White focuses on three core questions: Where did the notion of whiteness come from? What does it mean? And what is whiteness for? Sophia Steinert-Evoy met up with Biewen at a Seeing White event in New York and followed up over the phone to talk about the series and Biewen’s path from public radio to podcasting.

An Interview with John Biewen | Podcast Review

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