#DavidBrooks points out that a lot of our angry politics is directed at a "meritocracy" that thru wealth/connections, thinks itself better than the rest of us and keeps successfully trying to get further ahead. Absolutely. But then for his media recs, he rattles off elite after elite who entertain heterodox views. Yea, no. Critical thinking isn't reserved for elites. It has to be non elites who truly challenge the power of the Ivy League, big banks and mainstream media. https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/334-the-low-trust-society
our lack of universal health care is ridiculous and the easiest thing to fix. #Medicare4All is very popular with everyone except some of those getting wealthy from the industry. either candidate could ensure their win today by promising even to just start eligibility at 50yo.
if you can't be in a coalition with people you disagree with on at least a few things, you can't build a coalition big enough to accomplish anything in the United States or defeat rising fascism.
"The Verge and 404 Media are building out new functions that would allow them to distribute posts on their sites and on federated platforms – like Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky – at the same time. Replies to those posts on those platforms become comments on their sites."
If you're not looking at @theverge and @404mediaco as social web platforms that are hosting hand-picked content creators with a publisher's infrastructure, you're not paying attention. #Fediverse
awesome. we have to stop thinking about the fedi as a bunch of decentralized alternatives to the closed platforms, but AP as a social layer on top of the open web. that's where we become a threat to the vulture capitalists. the next step is to integrate the comment handling of lemmy/kbin/reddit. mastodon should do this too.
I mean, the LP has effectively been taken over by awful racist shitposters. He might not have expected there to be any actual libertarians left in the audience.
There is just no question in my mind that the culture of the fediverse (by any name) is a better model for civil discussion. But oddly, even many of its biggest champions have largely returned to Twitter, or pivoted to Threads, which may be a step up from Nazis, but that’s a pretty fucking law bar.
we have to find a way to get creators paid directly and automatically based on percentage of consumption. people would give a lot more if we made it easy, automatic and direct. a @w3c protocol for bank to bank transfers. an API to track and distribute based on what you read, listen to and watch. no middlemen.
90s: free speech via open web
now: democratic attention
next: autopay for what's consumed
Helpful tip to all of those woke activists who want to lie down in freeways and make cars swerve around you because you think it will somehow help your cause du jour:
Far more goods are moved by train than by truck. To serve your cause better, go lie down on some railroad tracks instead.
be careful what you wish for. if train operators were notified ahead of time, they would. there's also a ton of easy to access and fuck with train tracks. this is actually a great strategy.
if the American revolution was justified, I assume you'd agree this could be too. different goals and make it more properly targeted, even if more violent?
I have become much less supportive of protest to the degree I think messages can be heard via the internet, but it's also a question of how well this "republic" represents the interests of the people. a minority opinion can get their concerns attention in this way, but they shouldn't be able to force the laws to change etc imo.