ceoln @ceoln@social.cleverlibre.org

Is it weird that all the Web3.0 and crypto people seem to have based their entire worldview on a handful of Neil Stephenson/William Gibson novels and then TOTALLY MISSED THE POINT of what those novels were actually about?

Because I clearly remember in "Cryptonomicon" how the fact that cryptocurrency is basically worthless until/unless it's actually BACKED by anything (e.g. a several tons of lost Japanese gold as a Mcguffin) is a major driving plot point. I just as clearly remember that the whole premise of the Metaverse in "Snow Crash" was that a bunch of clueless tech bros tried to create a giant virtual reality playground and nobody wanted anything to do with it until Juanita figured out how to make avatars' faces -- and eyes especially -- accurately reflect the emotions of the people using them. And then WENT ON to explain that the Metaverse had become a vector for widespread corporate-sponsored mind control funded by a psychotic televangelist so obscenely wealthy that he owned an actual aircraft carrier as a yacht.

Just getting a lot of "Don't Create the Torment Nexus" vibes from the entire tech industry right now.

🧵One of the weird misunderstandings I see all the time has to do with what we need from individual energy sources. People make a lot of the fact that the sun doesn't shine at night, so if you're running your house on solar, you're screwed at night. Right?

Chilling reporting in the Washington Post about trans people targeted by the government in Texas.

Texas attorney general Paxton asked for a list of names of everyone who had changed their gender on their license.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/14/texas-transgender-data-paxton/

“You can find us anywhere you get your podcasts.”

I *adore* this phrase, because it has been like two whole-ass decades and not one single venture capital darling has managed to unseat plain RSS as the distribution method for podcasts. Not one. (And they have really tried!)

Podcasts are just out there, like air. You don’t go to one place to get them; you get them from everywhere and anywhere. You can choose how you want to engage with them and manage them and it is legitimately heartwarming that nothing has ever gotten in the way of that being a fundamental fact.

This is the best of what the web is. It will never have a stock ticker or even a marketing scheme. Most people don’t even know it is there. But it endures (past the many, many attempts by squillionaire corporates to kill it) because of its absolute unshakable utility.

My suggestion: any time you hear “anywhere you get your podcasts”, send a little thanks to RSS for keeping the real web alive.

#RSS #Podcasts #ProtocolsNotProducts

I often say that to take back cities from cars, you don’t always have to, nor SHOULD you necessarily, BAN cars… but you DO have to deprioritize them, to stop surrendering your city to them. Having said that, amazing things HAVE been done in many cities by pedestrianizing key streets or areas, opening them up to a higher level of urban life. Like in central Buenos Aires.
#cities #streets #urbanism #Argentina #cars #BuenosAires #city #OpenStreets #StreetLife

slow blink, eye of the setting

#landscape

Winterreise

The FTX hearing by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs starts in about twenty minutes. I'll be livetweeting it here, and will be publishing a recap of it in my newsletter later.

Hearing stream: https://banking.senate.gov/hearings/crypto-crash-why-the-ftx-bubble-burst-and-the-harm-to-consumers
Newsletter:https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/

I'll use the #FTXhearing hashtag throughout, so feel free to filter it out if I'm clogging your feed or you'd rather catch up later.

Museum of the Unnerving!

We venture into darkness to find the light, but sometimes the light has been swallowed by things that prefer to stay in the dark.

And so we mark that down, turn away, and run for our lives!

#AI #Museum

Batman but he finally gets therapy to deal with his parent's loss and realizes dressing up in a suit to beat up petty criminals is a trauma response and begins to invest billions into healthcare, police abolishment, fair housing, and drug treatment which drastically reduces crime to the point capitalists plot to eliminate him and when the succeed, this prompts the Justice Leauge to go after the industrialists responsible for his death, which give the general populace a chance to seize the means of production and the military is afraid to act because Superman has promised to destroy one military base for every civilian life they take.

That would be a pretty cool story.

Dear ones, if you have #depression or #anxiety rooted in the state of the world, don’t think there’s something wrong w you. You’re not alone. Your feelings are valid.
Here’s an idea:
Give what you can to the people fighting for us, like the investigative journalists exposing companies whose behaviors/choices contribute to decline (despite what they say!)My favs: (@juddlegum & @emorwee )

#DoYourPart & #rest. Be in
#nature. #breathe. Soothe your soul. Live #love 💙

The U.S. Postal Service says it will memorialize the late Rep. John Lewis with a new stamp next year. @MSNBC

I was going to clean the house, but then I realized this book isn't going to read itself.

Great news!

In a landmark judgement, the Barbados High Court has issued a ruling that decriminalized consensual same-sex relations.

Barbados becomes the 3rd Eastern Caribbean country in 2022 to strike down discriminatory legal provisions and decriminalize gay sex, after Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/13/barbados-high-court-decriminalizes-gay-sex

The remains of the abandoned Shawnee Resort
Gallery/info: https://www.abandonedamerica.us/shawnee-lancaster-resort

#abandoned #art #photography

This quiz is a repeat. If you’ve answered this before, please skip it this time around.

The first known speculative bubble (asset bubble causing a financial crash) involved ____________.

If you don’t know take your best guess.

Please boost to get more responses.

So far I'm not seeing much conversation on Mastadon, so a prompt for #EnergyTwitter and #ClimateTwitter refusniks:

What's the best #energy or #climate-related #book you've read this year and why? My pick: Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town by Colin Jerolmack

He explores the human impacts of fracking and why small town Americans may welcome something that harms the community in the long run. What #books do you recommend?

https://amzn.to/3UWLaty

DHS is rotten to the core.

"Exclusive: An intel analyst tried to prevent the Jan. 6 attack — but DHS failed to act"

https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-an-intel-analyst-tried-to-prevent-the-jan-6-attack-but-dhs-failed-to-act-190922453.html

Yesterday:

"Hundreds Of Oath Keepers Have Worked for various DHS agencies, including the Secret Service and Border Patrol"

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/oath-keepers-worked-department-homeland-security-1234646005/

Kurt Vonnegut on buying envelopes: