SNGTDTED

I go where I must, and do what I can.

[markcoatney]

Trump has been rightfully called the Twitter president in the past, and a crucial part of that legacy is the skilled exploitation of this information environment. His administration’s chief output is online shitposting. It’s not an actual form of governance, nor is it a kind of policy, but it is performative speech that’s supposed to signify action and, in the case of the Venezuela raid, strength. The resources of the most powerful military in the world are being marshaled in service of making memes declaring, “THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE.” All because the country’s leaders think it’s good theater, and in a postliterate political era, the spectacle is propulsive. 

This Charlie Warzel bit is so spot on.

[markcoatney]

Rover: Vineland's Labyrinth: A Pynchonian Primer

An accessible dive into "Vineland's" plot, characters, and key Pynchonian motifs like paranoia and entropy.

This one from Josh was good

[markcoatney]

The James Comey Indictment Is Huge. The Reaction So Far Is Exactly What They Want.

Why it’s useful to read the Niemöller poem backward.

“The other problem with the Niemöller poem is that it presents as sequential; you can tell yourself that there will be months, years, eons between their coming for the Comeys and the Haitians and the time they come for you. So when, in the span of a few short days, they in fact come for the “domestic terrorists” and they also come for George Soros, and also come for James Comey, and also come for residents of the District of Columbia for the crime of speaking Spanish, and they come for unarmed women in New York City hallways, and for the farmers, and for John Bolton, and for the New York Times, and for Mikie Sherrill, and for the fired federal workers, and for anyone for whom they can manufacture an unsubstantiated claim of mortgage fraud, as well as for small children in their beds in shelters, I mean, my dude, other than the coming for “you,” part, it’s the whole damn poem in the span of a week. But still, the poem only ever really works on the day they come for you.”

[markcoatney]

“Free speech culture,” as practiced in American, makes this deal seem like a scam. “Free speech culture” tells students that free speech means someone can come to their campus and say bigoted and evil things and that’s good, and that their remedy is more speech, but if they use that speech the wrong way, that’s bad. “Free speech culture” tells people that we should be more worried about a prominent podcasters’ speech being chilled than theirspeech being chilled. “Free speech culture” elevates the rituals of a particular elite, academic style of speech over substance, such that calling for censorship from a debate stage is pro-free-speech-culture. “Free speech culture” tells people they should shut up about the things that make them passionate so other people feel more comfortable disagreeing with them. “Free speech culture” is intellectually, morally, and philosophically incoherent and people perceive that incoherence. “Free speech culture” is currently telling students and professors that it’s their fault that government force is being used to deport and expel and fire and censor them because they dissented wrong. “Free speech culture” tells people that others have the right to denigrate them, but they have some ill-defined obligation not to respond too hard. “Free speech culture” tells people they’re wrong and illiberal to notice that people using government force to censor them were previously calling them illiberal and censorial.

How "Free Speech Culture" Is Killing Free Speech: Part One

Blurring The Lines Between Official Censorship And Individual Criticism Built The Intellectual Foundation For Trump's Assault On Free Expres

[markcoatney]

[markcoatney]

Rover.

A new social space for good people.

My new joint!

[azspot]

“I don’t say this lightly: the system is no longer designed to be corrected by the very tools we’re told to use. Partisanship is largely a performative art, not a real debate of policy or ideas. Reform is still discussed but never allowed to mature. We are not living in the America that taught us how democracy works. We are living in the one that quietly replaced it while we clung to rituals that now feel performative.”

— Eulogy for a Republic

[markcoatney]

For Some Reason I've Been Thinking About 'Revolt of the Elites' a Lot Lately

A good podcast overview here

[azspot]

“The public was not convinced by our argument, in 2024, because we were shilling for the existing version of democracy—which is deeply corrupt, which does not work. When I got into politics twenty-five years ago, something like campaign-finance reform, government reform, democracy reform, was a top-three issue for Democrats. It was something we talked about every single day. Somewhere along the line that stopped; somewhere along the line we stopped talking about reforming democracy. So it became easy for voters to just believe that we were all corrupt, and that neither Republicans nor Democrats were actually sincere in fixing what was wrong with democracy.”

— Chris Murphy

[azspot]

America’s Global Reputation Has Fallen off a Cliff

[markcoatney]

I really am kicking myself that I didn’t think of doing Childhood’s End on Jed’s podcast, but this is a reminder of why George Dyson is, well, George Dyson. Really good discussion about what the book has to say about AI and Social Media; it will challenge the way you think about these things. 

[markcoatney]

If you were born around the 1970s, you probably remember many more dead insects on the windscreen of your parents’ car than on your own. Global land-dwelling insect populations are dropping about 9% a decade. If you’re a geek, you probably programmed your own computer to make basic games. You certainly remember a web with more to read than the same five websites. You may have even written your own blog. But many people born after 2000 probably think a world with few insects, little ambient noise from birdcalls, where you regularly use only a few social media and messaging apps (rather than a whole web) is normal. 

We Need To Rewild The Internet  | NOEMA

The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.

[markcoatney]

It's my 17 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[markcoatney]

[markcoatney]

 X/Twitter is a Pornhub where everything is twisted around the particular kinks of a specific, and visibly disturbed individual. Whatever Musk wants, as the Voice of God, may or may not become the Voice of the People, but is probably what the people are going to end up talking about, whether they want to or not. 

We're getting the social media crisis wrong

The bigger problem isn't disinformation. It's degraded democratic publics

[jkottke]

Satellite Photos of Middle Earth. If you’ve ever been curious about what Tolkien’s Middle Earth would look like from space, here you go.

[cosmonautroger]

Star Trek - The Animated Series (1973)