BC TWITTER
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Privacy Without Monopoly; Broad Band; $50T moved from America's 90% to the 1%; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/QgK8ZMRKp7

#Pluralistic

1/

 This weekend, I'm participating in Boskone 58, Boston's annual sf convention.

https://t.co/2LfFssVcZQ

Tonight, on a panel called "Tech Innovation? Does Silicon Valley Have A Mind-Control Ray, Or a Monopoly?" at 530PM Pacific.

2/
Privacy Without Monopoly: A new EFF white paper, co-authored with Bennett Cyphers.

https://t.co/TVzDXt6bz6

3/
Broad Band: Claire L Evans's magesterial history of women in computing.

https://t.co/Lwrej6zVYd

4/
$50T moved from America's 90% to the 1%: The hereditary meritocracy is in crisis.

https://t.co/TquaxOmPi8

5/
#15yrsago Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users? https://t.co/xjCCmH9F6Z

#10yrsago Nokia’s radical CEO has a mercenary, checkered past https://t.co/i4oVbTxBVG

#5yrsago I was a Jeopardy! clue https://t.co/opcZmMiWfO

6/
Yesterday's threads: Aaron Epstein got fiber; Ajit Pai, plague villain; and more!

https://t.co/sbgWrhSGBd

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:

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

* Technology, Self-Determination, and the Future of the Future (Purdue CERIAS), Feb 17, https://t.co/po5IivZyr4

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

11/
Recent appearances:

* Chop Shop Economics https://t.co/N2coD3DoiY

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

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

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/QgK8ZMRKp7

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/CrIHk7JNNH

16/
Today's top sources: Kottke (https://t.co/ZxJfuYjNR5), Naked Capitalism (https://t.co/iNjUCBfMr0).

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

1/


After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

2/

I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

4/
HISTORY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
When they write the history of this era, one of the strangest chapters will be devoted to Uber, a company that was never, ever going to be profitable, which existed solely to launder billions for the Saudi royals.

1/


From the start, Uber's "blitzscaling" strategy involved breaking local taxi laws (incurring potentially unlimited civil liability) while losing (lots of) money on every ride. They flushed billions and billions and billions of dollars down the drain.

2/

But they had billions to burn. Mohammed bin Salman, the murdering Crown Prince of the Saudi royal family, funded Softbank - a Japanese pump-and-dump investment scheme behind Wework and other grifts - with $80B as part of his "Vision 2030"

Vision 2030 is a scheme to diversify Saudi wealth away from hydrocarbons by attempting to establish monopolies that will allow the family to control entire sectors of the global economy.

4/

These schemes are longshots, and the fallback position is to unload failed monopolies - with staggering debt-overhangs - on investors who've been suckered with the promise that really big piles of shit surely have a pony buried underneath them somewhere.

5/
UBER
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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: 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/
SOCIETY
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

More from Twitter

Rae Sanni
Rae Sanni
@raesanni
"Leftist" twitter (i use quotation marks bc twitter leftists are bogus, not that Leftist ideology is bad) makes real progressives look really bad. And if you're wondering, *Britney Spears voice* I'm Not a Liberal, Not yet a "Leftist"

I'm fairly progressive. Elizabeth Warren was my #1. I know there are associations ppl make w white women who support her, but my black self liked her bc she has progressive values and seems fit to hold office. Bc progressivism in practice needs someone who knows how to govern.

She was called a snake by "leftists" for myriad reasons, but one of them was not quitting so Bernie could win. LMAO. Seriously.

That's when I noticed twitter "leftism" was a cult of personality. Bc if the closest person ideologically to Bernie is a snake for differing on her healthcare plan (not ideologically btw, just practically), then this shit is about that man. Not ideology.

Twitter "leftists" also have a race problem. HUGE race problem. "Solving class will help racism" is a STUPID political philosophy anyway, bc foundationally American economics is racist. Literally we're a world super power bc we didn't pay slaves for a century
TWITTER
Khadijah *a centered voice*
Khadijah *a centered v...
@UpFromTheCracks
The twitter ban on 45 is a victory in some sense for the immediate but a warning in the long term, not on the curtail of free speech but as gesture towards the expansive power commercial tech has on every aspect of our governance and our lives, I don’t quite have the words but-

What I’m trying to get at, is not just that Twitter’s decision allows us to see—in ways that have been obscured—how much control they have over content moderation—

but as @Elinor_Carmi points out “platforms don’t just moderate or filter “content”; they alter what registers to us and our social groups as “social” or as “experience.” https://t.co/GSByAOoDWg changed

I’m worried that the celebration of Twitter’s intervention on fascist rhetoric-however too little and too late- directs us to desire tech companies enforcement of liberal and democratic procedures rather than towards an investigation of

how they’ve developed computational infrastructures which exceed the power of the nation state, are hollowing out our institutions for frictionless (see removing human contact) optimization and are insufficiently described by neoliberalism
TWITTER
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Ewan Birney
Ewan Birney
@ewanbirney
So - that was quite a twitter/media day for me, and welcome to my new followers; 3 threads coming up - introducing myself, explaining my background and COIs (this one); technical aspects of the new strain from my vantage; commentary on what is means for the future

(for the people who know me, skip the rest of this thread!)

A brief tweet portrait of me; I am deputy director general of @embl and co-direct (with Rolf Apweiler, not on twitter) one it's six sites, @emblebi which is based just south of Cambridge, UK.

is the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, a European treaty organisation that does science, similar to CERN. EMBL does molecular biology from high end atomic structural biology to development - and in the future, bridging to Ecosystems.

EMBL is Headquartered in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany and has 5 other sites; Hamburg (Germany also), Grenoble (France), EMBL-EBI at Hinxton (UK), Rome (Italy) and Barcelona (Spain).
TWITTER
MSDL2020
MSDL2020
@MSDL2020
The solution to postmodernism and relativism, explained in a series of tweets. See 🧵🧵🧵beginning below.

1. Since all tyrannies are based on dogmas, that is, on fundamental statements of absolute fact, and since all dogmas are based on lies, it behooves us first to seek for truth, and freedom will not be far away. And the truth is ... that we know nothing.

2. Objectively speaking, we know nothing at all. Any system of intellectual thought--whether it be science, logic, religion, or philosophy--is based on certain fundamental ideas or axioms which are assumed, but which cannot be
proved. This is the grave of all positivism.

3. We assume, but we do not KNOW (objectively speaking), that there is a real and objective world outside our own minds. Ultimately, we do not know what we are, or what
the world is.

4. Further, if there is a real world apart from ourselves, we
cannot know what that is; all we can know is what we perceive and theorize it to be.
TWITTER
SamSays
SamSays
@samjawed65
Merry Christmas! How’s your Christmas going? Here is a collection of random tweets from Indian Twitter that will do India proud. Thread 👇1/n

The run up to Christmas started with Chavhanke running his Christmas special series on conversions. 2/n


A few days before Christmas, a ‘dharmic’ influencer started a campaign about whether Hindus should celebrate Christmas. 3/n


Right-wing blog OpIndia meanwhile thought it was an opportune time to dig out a 10+ year old video of Zakir Naik on Christmas greetings. 4/n


No Christmas is complete without Indology enlightening his followers. In fact he does it every year on Christmas. 5/n
TWITTER

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Aditya Todmal
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Boss is always Boss @Mitesh_Engr

Mitesh Sir's FUTURES BREAKOUT TRADES 101:

• How to pick stocks at right time?
• What to look for?
• Importance of BO post consolidation
• How to manage SL
• How to get huge profits
• Multiple Examples

In collaboration with @niki_poojary


Importance of Trading only BO or BD stocks by @Mitesh_Engr Sir: 👇

•Two questions to always ask:

~Why stock is going up/down and when?
~ Who is behind big up/down and when?

• Trade only stocks with Momentum
• Instant results
• Small SL or huge profits


Sir's take on how to Trade: 👇

• Observe fight between buyer & seller
• Position will be created within first 3 hours
• Operators will win
• Just find BO or BD
• Look for huge volume support
• Give company to operators
• ATP importance explained


How to take trade in Breakout/Breakdown stocks by @Mitesh_Engr Sir: 👇

• Check Support & Resistance
• Wait for 2-3 months consolidation
• Surge in volumes
• Trade on 3 min charts
• Small SL
• Keep trailing
• Always pyramid in profit


When and Why to Pyramid? By @Mitesh_Engr Sir

• Adding to winning positions
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Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
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Sumit Grrg
Sumit Grrg
@sumitgrrg
These 10 threads will teach you more than reading 100 books

Five billionaires share their top lessons on startups, life and entrepreneurship (1/10)


10 competitive advantages that will trump talent (2/10)


Some harsh truths you probably don’t want to hear (3/10)


10 significant lies you’re told about the world (4/10)
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Vibhu Vashisth \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Vibhu Vashisth 🇮🇳...
@VIBHU_Tweet
Did you know?

Rani Bhabani was the Queen of Natore, Bengal or 'Natorer Rani' as she was famously called. She made great contributions in Tarapith & renovated Benaras.

In Varanasi, Durga Kund Mandir was constructed by Rani Bhabani in the 18th century.


Born in Chhatimgram village, Bogra District,Her father's name was Atmaram Choudhury.Bhabani was married off to Raja Ramkanta Moitra,the then zamindar of Rajshahi.After his death, Bhabani became the zamindar, and started being referred to as Rani.She was known as Ardhabangeshwari.

A woman as a zamindar was extremely rare in those days, but Rani Bhabani managed the vast Rajshahi zamindari most efficiently and effectively for over four decades.
Maharani Bhavani was very pious in her personal life. She passed her life in a strict disciplined way.


She conducted the administrative work skillfully. As a Maharani she was an impartial judge. Rani Bhavani had a very hard time during the fag end of her life. The Zamindari (estate) incurred serious loss due to the change of the revenue policy of the company.

In spite of being the owner of a large Zamindari (estate), she had to depend on the stipend of the government in the later part of her life. The amount of this stipend gradually decreased and became Rs. 1000/- only in the end.
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Richard James
Richard James
@RJSHutton
I think a plausible explanation is that whatever Corbyn says or does, his critics will denounce - no matter how much hypocrisy it necessitates.


Corbyn opposes the exploitation of foreign sweatshop-workers - Labour MPs complain he's like Nigel

He speaks up in defence of migrants - Labour MPs whinge that he's not listening to the public's very real concerns about immigration:

He's wrong to prioritise Labour Party members over the public:

He's wrong to prioritise the public over Labour Party
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