The Privatization Scam 0
The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell can voucher that it is–er–questionable.
Geeking Out, Seasonal Edition 0
Listening to an episode of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in Firefox on Ubuntu MATE with the Plasma desktop. The Konsole terminal emulator is open to the left of Firefox. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Rand Gestures 0
Rand Paul said it out loud: Republicans don’t want citizens to vote.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness is so easy that even a child can do it.
Facebook Frolics, Rule of Lawless Dept. 0
Afterthought:
It is both amazing and appalling that this person and those like her are willing to sacrifice America’s democracy on the altar of Donald Trump.
Recommended Reading 0
Josephine Tey’s Inspector Grant novels.
I first read these [mumble] years ago in high school. My high school library had two anthologies entitled Three by Tey and Four, Five, and Six by Tey (how they ended up in my high school library I will never know). In looking for something to distract me from current events and being a mystery buff, I remembered them and purchased the six Inspector Grant mysteries.
They are as good as I remembered them to be.
Facebook Frolics 0
Cathy O’Neil skewers the Zuckerborg’s argument that it is to big and complex to break up. A snippet (emphasis added). As an aside, I suspect that U. S. Steel, American Sugar, and other trusts busted by Teddy Roosevelt made similar arguments.
Really? No doubt, the breakup would be difficult for Facebook’s managers, who rely on data sharing among WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook to create the most complete possible profiles of users and then sell their attention to the highest bidder. If the companies were separated, all the investment they’d been making into surveillance and targeting wouldn’t immediately work out as well as they had hoped. For them, the product is the advertising, not the service to users.
An Authority on Authoritarianism 0
Thom and his guest discuss the workings of authorianism.