BC SOCIETY
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Criti-Hype; Right to Repair is back for 2021; The free market and rent-seeking; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/pXnzoWKJn2

#Pluralistic

1/

 Criti-Hype: Tech bros will settle for "evil genius."

https://t.co/OyiM1vUS8Y

2/
Right to Repair is back for 2021: Will Apple sabotage this one too?

https://t.co/3gcyEZQWfk

3/
The free market and rent-seeking: Unauthorized bread and poor doors.

https://t.co/7Ob6AdmkDz

4/
#10yrsago Diane Duane’s crowdfunded publishing experiment finally concludes https://t.co/qsRnZxiL8b

#10yrsago Inside Sukey, the anti-kettling mobile app https://t.co/puGNKw5XgF

5/
#5yrsago Swatting attempted against Congresswoman who introduced anti-swatting bill https://t.co/njnCC5DOvq

#5yrsago Exclusive: Snowden intelligence docs reveal UK spooks’ malware checklist https://t.co/fxHX4qicar

6/
#5yrsago Ross and Carrie become Scientologists: an investigative report 5 years in the making https://t.co/idmcPQb7Xz

6/
Yesterday's threads: Someone Comes to Town Part 30; Unidirectional entryism; The good news about vaccination bad news; and more!

https://t.co/d7uF8QojFL

7/
My latest novel is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books. @washingtonpost called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance."

Get signed books from @darkdel: https://t.co/HfWfdx8sIu

8/
My 2020 book "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is a critique of Big Tech connecting conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies and proposing a way to deal with both:

https://t.co/Us0SPxlcmD

Now, it's available in paperback!

https://t.co/x2eXIkUY64

9/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

https://t.co/vpGcSZiPZ2

10/
Upcoming appearances:

* Launch for the young adult edition of Edward Snowden's memoir PERMANENT RECORD, Feb 9, https://t.co/BY6hqpJFeO

* Boskone, 58, Feb 12-15, https://t.co/2LfFssVcZQ

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25, https://t.co/neeqzKaZp0

11/
Recent appearances:

* Monocle Reads https://t.co/ENWPDLYVXg

* Hedging Bets on the Future (Motherboard Cyber):
https://t.co/7YeNDAjLfc

* Applying the Pandemic Mindset to Climate Change:
https://t.co/syTXEF1gFz

12/
My first picture book is out! It's called Poesy the Monster Slayer and it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

https://t.co/yQLVua4WkB

13/
You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at https://t.co/iSBh8s9m7q: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: https://t.co/pXnzoWKJn2

14/
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🧵". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

Subscribe here: https://t.co/TwPzz87nAw

15/
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at //twitter.com/[email protected]." target="_blank">@[email protected].

Here's today's edition: https://t.co/WN9scXL6ds

16/
Today's top sources: Beka Valentine (https://t.co/xeUaWzSk0w?, Naked Capitalism (https://t.co/gC6LHDMUjt).

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
After the 9/11 attacks, airlines and public buildings adopted a flurry of "security" measures, like taking away pen-knives from fliers or requiring visitors to office buildings to be photographed or present a driver's license.

1/


Bruce Schneier's seminal 2003 "Beyond Fear" called these measures: #securitytheater.

Schneier pointed out that these measures would be easy to circumvent, and were thus providing only the comforting appearance of security - not security

Security theater is worse than nothing. Security theater gives people the false impression that their risks have been mitigated, when actually things are just as dangerous.

After al, if you know that danger exists, you can take some steps to mitigate or avoid it.

3/

But if you have the false impression that you've been made safer, you might unwittingly engage in risky behavior.

4/

Like, if you know your car's brakes are flaky, you might nurse the car along to the mechanic at low speed on side-streets.

But if you don't know about the brakes, you're apt to discover their flaws at 75mph on the freeway.

5/
FOR LATER READ
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
There is no shortage of takes about what's going on with Gamestop (and other surging stocks), Robinhood and Reddit's r/wallstreetbets, many of them contradictory - at least on the face of them. But I think it's possible for most of these takes to be right. Here's how.

1/


First you need to understand the underlying mechanics of the story. Stock markets are fundamentally a way of making bets, including bets on the outcome of other peoples' bets, and bets on the outcomes of THOSE bets.

2/

All this complexity creates lots of exploitable opportunities. Some of these opportunities are considered legitimate and are given respectable names like "arbitrage." Others are considered illegitimate, and are called disreputable things like "stock manipulation."

3/

A hypothetical Martian observing all this through a telescope could not tell you which kinds of bets were honest and which were dishonest, because the difference isn't about any objective standard, but rather, about power.

4/

The strategies of powerful people are legit, while the strategies of their would-be dethroners are not legit. Sometimes, even outright frauds are OK if they're done by people with enough power.

5/
TRADING , STOCK MKT
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The Night of the Short Fingers saw many of the US's largest tech companies blocking Trump and trumpist platforms like Parler, provoking a storm of punditry about What It All Means for the tech companies to have taken this content moderation step.

1/


The best expert I know on the subject is @jilliancyork, my @eff colleague. She's published "an ongoing list" of "everything pundits are getting wrong about this current moment in content moderation."

You should read it.

Here's some highlights:

“Deplatforming Trump sets a precedent."

York: "The only 'precedent' set here is that this is indeed the first time a sitting US president has been deplatformed by a tech company."

3/

But political leaders around the world have already received this treatment: Lebanon, Burma, etc. Even the reach of the deplatforming is nothing new: last summer's US Iran ban saw blocks of everything, up to and including Etsy listings for "Persian dolls."

4/
HISTORY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Dependency Confusion; Adam Curtis on criti-hype; Catalytic converter theft; Apple puts North Dakota on blast; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/Osts9lAjPo

#Pluralistic

1/


This weekend, I'll be participating in Boskone 58, Boston's annual sf convention, where I'm doing panels and a reading.

https://t.co/2LfFssVcZQ

2/


Dependency Confusion: A completely wild supply-chain hack.

https://t.co/TDRNHUX0Ug

3/


Adam Curtis on criti-hype: Big Tech as an epiphenomenon of sociopathic mediocrity, not supergenius.

https://t.co/MYmHOosTk3

4/


Catalytic converter theft: Rhodium at $21,900/oz.

https://t.co/SDMAXrQwdd

5/
TWITTER
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
We are in an extraordinary moment, but not an entirely unprecedented one. Since the earliest days, societies have had to cope with disasters that wiped out the ability of everyday people to service their debts and thus threatened to destroy their societies.

1/


If you've read U Missouri econ prof Michael Hudson's writings on the subject, you know that for millennia, rulers in these circumstances simply wiped out the debts, declaring a "jubilee" that allowed people to rebuild after disasters rather than being trapped in debt spirals.

2/

In a new essay on @NakedCapitalism called "How an 'Act of God' Pandemic Is Destroying the West: The US Is Saving the Financial Sector, Not the Economy," Hudson reveals the abyss on whose brink we are balanced, and what we must do to pull back from

Hudson's oft-repeated golden rule is "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid." That is to say: making it harder to declare bankruptcy, or binding debtors over to arbitration or wage-garnishing won't actually get them to pay debts they cannot afford.

4/

This is a very sharp observation in the US context. The 2008 crisis was "solved" by bailing out finance, not people - and so the finance sector was able to lend to consumers to buy things again, while consumer debt mounted to spectacular levels.

5/
ECON

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Michael Grunwald
Michael Grunwald
@MikeGrunwald
My dad’s first memory is hiding under a table 80 years ago tonight, when Nazis took his dad to Dachau on #Kristallnacht.

His parents, my Omi and Opi, always considered themselves more German than Jewish, so they didn’t think they’d get swept up in the madness.

Opi was taken to city hall with other Jews and lined up against a wall. He thought he was going to be shot.

He always remembered when they got to Dachau there were pajamas with Jewish stars waiting on their cots. Obviously not a spontaneous thing.

He was very lucky. His family got him a fake Uruguayan visa and he was out of Dachau six weeks later. “Before Christmas,” my dad recalls.
SOCIETY
The Sharing Scientist
The Sharing Scientist
@ScienceShared
Unless we pass laws which support people to enable them to self-isolate properly, any improvements to test & trace will have marginal impact and cases will simply spiral out of control once again as we ease lockdown in December.

A short thread on what we can do and why 👇
1/


Improving the currently poor rates of self-isolation is actually the key point, which many scientists, politicians, & commentators do still seem to be missing.

This requires good public health communication, proper support for those who need to self-isolate, & trust.
2/

Massive testing and tracing will only significantly reduce
transmission if positive cases isolate effectively. Yet
currently fewer than 20% of those who should isolate are fully adherent.

I don't think I need to explain why it's so critical to improve these rates.

3/

Survey data shows intention to adhere to test/trace/isolate behaviours is higher than self-reported adherence: whilst 76% of people intend to share contacts, only 50% of people correctly recognise symptoms &
just 12% get a test, 18% isolate, & 11% of contacts isolate properly.
4

Self-reported ability to self-isolate
is three times lower in those who earn less than £20,000 per year or have less than £100 saved.

5/
SOCIETY
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Brianne Kimmel \U0001f4ac
Brianne Kimmel 💬...
@briannekimmel
Shocking fact: Millennial men are less likely to work than any other age and gender demographic in America.

Today, there are 500,000 young men missing from the U.S. workforce.

Research suggests video games & improved leisure tech plays a role in the problem. 👇 Thread:

Following the 2007 to 2009 recession, 25 to 34 year old men exited high school with fewer middle-skill job opportunities than years prior.

During this time, we saw an increased number of men living with parents & choosing unemployment over lower paying jobs.

It's estimated that 24M millennials live w/ their parents.

1 in 4 living in their parents’ home neither go to school nor work.

What's more surprising? 9 in 10 who lived with their parents a year ago are still living there w/ no plans to leave.

Economists are calling millennial men a lost generation.

According to economist David Dorn:

“If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point.”

Economists suggest this choosiness is a generational trait.

Forbes interview w/ a high school educated man:

"I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth."
“People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they
SOCIETY
Paul Matzko
Paul Matzko
@PMatzko
Having spent 2020 telling covid denalists that they were overly optimistic about the pandemic, I now look forward to spending 2021 telling covid maximalists that they are overly pessimistic about the end of the pandemic.

Telling a denialist in May that we shouldn't open bars back up = telling a maximalist in February that we should open schools back up.

Look, folks, the math is straightforward. ~13% of Americans have been vaccinated as of this

And the 7 day average continues to rise; we're approach 2 million vaccine doses per day. Meaning that we'll double that ~13% much faster than the two months it took us to get there.


So it's entirely reasonable that absent any other intervention, we should expect to hit ~30% vaccinated by the end of March.
SOCIETY
All Possums Go to Heaven
All Possums Go to Heav...
@AndyinDC1
Capitalism demolishes society and, with it, itself.

A thread.

1/

Prior to capitalism, there were plenty of elite-centric, exploitive systems in place. European and Japanese feudalism. Roman mass slavery. The corvee labor of the ancient hydraulic state. Etc.

2/

But as exploitive and repressive as these systems were, they still retained some sense of mutual obligation among classes. Elites depend on the masses to survive and thrive. You can only exploit them up to a certain point, beyond which you threaten your own labor supply.

3/

Consider this quote from Kenneth Jupp on European feudalism. Feudalism entailed *mutual obligations* between rich and poor.

4/


These obligations were not equal, uniform, or always universally respected. But they were at least *there.* In return for labor and agricultural surplus, a feudal lord was obligated to protect his villeins, provide them justice, and respect their usufruct land rights.

5/
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I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹
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Maker movement is doing to startups what startups did to corporations.

Here is why 👇

Startups fixed the problem of innovation, that corporations lack.

In big, slow corporations, innovation is a RISK and distraction from the core $$$ profitable business.

Agile startups could launch, iterate fast and eventually stumble upon new growing market opportunities.

However,

When a startup reaches product-market-fit, it has to 🚀 "grow at all costs" and reach market dominance before some giant corporation can replicate their new product and distribute it to their existing giant customer base.

Startup's "growth at all costs" often means growth at the expense of charging customers $$$ money.

Hence, to be sustainable, startups have to constantly chase investor money.

Startup teams spend more time finding and pleasing investors, than finding and pleasing customers.

95% of startups die because they run out of (investor) money + no business model + crazy investor expectations.

Same way corporations die, when unable to adjust to new technology and market shifts.
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SK
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Margatha Natarajar murthi - Uthirakosamangai temple near Ramanathapuram,TN
#ArudraDarisanam
Unique Natarajar made of emerlad is abt 6 feet tall.
It is always covered with sandal paste.Only on Thriuvadhirai Star in month Margazhi-Nataraja can be worshipped without sandal paste.


After removing the sandal paste,day long rituals & various abhishekam will be https://t.co/e1Ye8DrNWb day Maragatha Nataraja sannandhi will be closed after anointing the murthi with fresh sandal paste.Maragatha Natarajar is covered with sandal paste throughout the year


as Emerald has scientific property of its molecules getting disturbed when exposed to light/water/sound.This is an ancient Shiva temple considered to be 3000 years old -believed to be where Bhagwan Shiva gave Veda gyaana to Parvati Devi.This temple has some stunning sculptures.
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Anu Satheesh
Anu Satheesh
@AnuSatheesh5
Guruvayur Sri Krishna & Coconut with Horns.
#Krishnaleela
#Bhakthi
🕉
We’ve all grown up listening to stories of Shri Krishna. This one is a famous story of Shri Krishna in Guruvayur Temple, also called Dakshina Dwaraka.


There lived a villager who planted coconut saplings and had promised that he would offer the 'first coconut' from each of his coconut trees to "Guruvayurappan". When the trees started to yield coconuts, he collected the first coconut from all the trees in a sack 👇


and set forth to Guruvayur.

On the way he was stopped by a robber who asked all the items in the sack. The villager told the robber that the coconuts in the sack belonged to Guruvayurappan and so he was unable to hand it over.
@SriramKannan77 @Jayalko1


The robber with anger asked the villager "Is Guruvaurappan's coconut any different? Does it have horns ?".
Saying so the robber pulled the sack forcefully out of the villager's hand, and coconuts came out..👇


To their astonishment each and every coconut in the sack had horns! Even today, the coconut with horns are displayed in the temple for devotees to see.

Below Picture is not original, as we cannot take photos inside temple.
Hare Krishna
Guruvayurappa
🕉🕉🕉🕉🕉
Shubham
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Ramblings of a Sikh
Ramblings of a Sikh
@RamblingSingh
1/ Jassa Singh Ahluwalia & his role in the history of Shri Harmandir Sahib (A Thread)


2/ Jassa Singh was born in 1720/21 at a village called Ahlu in the Lahore District of Punjab.


3/ Jassa Singh was educated in Delhi, in Persian, Arabic & more, under the care & supervision of Mata Sundari Ji.

Mata Sundari Gurdwara in Delhi.


4/ In 1733, Jassa Singh's mama, Thag Singh (ਤਾਗ ਸਿੰਘ), requested Mata Sundari Ji's permission to take Jassa Singh back to Punjab.


5/ At first Mata Ji refused but eventually gave permission for Jassa Singh to go with his mama, giving Jassa Singh a blessing and weapons, informing him, it was now the right time to take up arms.
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