Notable stuff I’ve stumbled across, worth checking out.
- The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Bogna Konior. If
you just search for the title, you’ll get lots of hits to … something else. The one you want to read is this one: because Bogna is a far superior author. What’s it about? Well, clearly inspired by the Liu Cixin books. Written as a companion piece to a sculpture: Black Market : Zero Hedge (2019) by Andrej Škufca. Wait, what’s it about? Oh, right. Its about the kinds of things I sometimes write about. In my other posts here. Except Bogna writes better than I do. So there. It’s about that. (7 Sept 2020) - Facebook is a Doomsday Machine by Adrienne LaFrance Since the title is left-explanatory, I decided to wallow in photos of decommissioned Titan nuclear missile silos instead. Afterwards, I forced myself to read the article. It mostly states the obvious, if you think about such things, but let me re-iterate: 1) the algos drive engagement, and that means promoting extremist posts. 2) Zuckerberg is the most powerful man in the world. (yes, he’s more powerful that the POTUS. Good luck with that, Biden. You’re screwed. We’re screwed. We’re all screwed.) 3) His activities are detrimental to humankind. 4) There’s pretty much nothing we can do about it. 5) Lots of other curious commentary. Misses the point that we are living in a phase change. But whatever, that’s a topic too big, too abstract. (18 Dec 2020)