In 1997, Jorn Barger coined the term "web-log" to describe his website "Robot Wisdom," where he logged his journeys around this exciting new digital space called "the web." Two years later, @peterme shortened "web-blog" to "#blog":
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
I've now been blogging for 23 years, nearly half my life, a near-daily discipline that forms the spine of my writing practice. I take everything that seems important, and, in summarizing it for strangers, embed it in my own mind, and then find connections that turn into essays, speeches, stories and novels:
For the past 3+ years, I've been blogging solo on my Pluralistic.net project. It started off as a "link-blog," in the Robot Wisdom vein - short hits summarizing interesting things:
But over the months and years, it's turned into a place where I write long essays, sometimes six or seven per week, trying to pull on all those threads that I've cataloged over the decades, weaving them together into big, thoughtful pieces, often to great and gratifying notice and even a little fanfare:
But I miss the linkblogging! For the past 14 months, Pluralistic has featured a little section called "Hey look at this," where I post three short links, bare-bones pointers to interesting stuff online:
These links pile up in my todo.txt file, ebbing and flowing. Some days, I've got nothing for the section. Some days, I've got a backlog. These days, I've got a massive backlog - enough links for many, many editions. I am drowning in linkblog debt, and the interest is compounding. It's time for a #jubilee:
> It is worth remembering that the internet wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be six boring men with too much money creating spaces that no one likes but everyone is forced to use because those men have driven every other form of online existence into the ground.
> The internet was supposed to have pockets, to have enchanting forests you could stumble into and dark ravines you knew better than to enter. The internet was supposed to be a place of opportunity, not just for profit but for surprise and connection and delight. Instead, like most everything American enterprise has promised held some new dream, it has turned out to be the same old thing—a dream for a few, and something much more confining for everyone else.
This doesn't just make me want to stand up and salute - it makes me want to build a barricade (or a #guillotine).
On to "Reddit Data API Update: Changes to Pushshift Access," a #Reddit thread where the volunteer mods are discussing another #enshittification move: Reddit's pre-IPO API shut-down that has broken all the mod tools that volunteers use to shovel out Reddit's Augean Stables, getting rid of spam and catfishing and fraud:
This isn't just "stop talking to each other and start buying things" - this is "stop doing billions of dollars in volunteer labor keeping our users safe, and start paying us for the privilege." Good luck with that, Reddit.
Hey! The Hollywood writers are back on strike! The Guild is a shitkicking, take-no-prisoners, radical union with massive solidarity:
It's what let them trounce the talent agencies - hyper-concentrated to just four companies, two owned by #PrivateEquity ghouls - over a 22 month strike:
The talent agencies had rigged the system so that instead of getting a 10% commission on the writers' earnings, they were taking as much as 90% out of every dollar - and were about to make it worse, building their own studios, so they could negotiate with themselves on behalf of their clients.
In the same week, 7,000 writers - even the ones who weren't getting screwed - fired their agents, and demanded a return to the 90/10 split and a ban on agencies owning studios. The agencies say nfw. The writers stayed on the picket line.
David hosted our LA launch, where he told us, "We thought the agencies had all the power. We learned that they only had as much power as we gave them. You can make a movie without an agent. You can't make one without a writer."
The new strike is about the same thing as the old strike: shifting money from labor to capital. The studios have figured out how to use streaming to avoid paying writers.
They're , using gimmicks like shorter seasons and running their own streaming services to dodge the wages the writers are owed. As the union says, the studios "created a gig economy inside a union workforce."
I live in Burbank, where many of these studios are located. I'll see you on the picket line.
Sticking with labor for a moment: the Biden administration is investigating the use of #bossware - the spyware your boss uses to monitor your driving, keystrokes, web usage, location, hand-movements, facial expressions, even your eyeballs:
If you're living under bossware's yoke - say, if your boss has transformed "work from home" into "live at work," then you know what to do: melt the switchboard!
One more labor story: a reminder that labor rights are a marathon, not a sprint. A group of #Amazon drivers won a $30/hour contract through their union, the #Teamsters. Even more importantly, the contract lets them refuse to work under unsafe conditions (it's never just about money):
But there's a catch: these are Amazon drivers, but they don't work for Amazon. They drive Amazon-branded vans, specced down to the last rivet by Amazon. They wear Amazon vests. They deliver Amazon packages. But they work for "Delivery Service Partners," a kind of pyramid scheme created by Amazon that tricks workers into thinking that paying Amazon for the privilege of working for a trillion-dollar company makes them "entrepreneurs."
Instead, they're #ChickenizedReverseCentaurs. "#Chickenized" because - like poultry farmers - they are totally controlled by a monopoly buyer that dictates every part of their business to them, dribbling out just enough money to roll over their loans and go deeper into debt.
"#ReverseCentaurs," because they're the inverse of the #AI theorists' idea of a "#centaur," that is, a computer-assisted human. Instead, they are human-assisted computers, with their every last move scripted to the finest degree by #bossware that they have to pay for:
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