Reading @doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen the agency issues with uncapped contingent contracting by the state are obvious. No one has an incentive to care how much the broad public pays in nickels and dimes for state-provided goods that don't rise to political prominence. Rather than whack-a-mole-ing fees, should agencies simply be forbidden from this form of contracting without literally a presidential waiver?
ht @Montag
if you let trade run imbalanced, a correlation between surplus and autocracy is predictable... https://twitter.com/interfluidity/status/1598033533800714241
(i'm still experimenting with how to manage the relationship between this new place and the old one. sorry!)
These feel like revolutionary times, but there is no revolutionary model. In the early postwar years, revolution often meant joining an international communist future. In the post-Cold-War years, it meant joining the liberal democratic end of history. Now? The arc of history doesn't know where it's going, so however inspiring the protest, it traces the trajectory of a boomerang.
@akhilrao "sample size" is a bit grand, since the "sample" begins biased and then is self-selected. but 84 accounts responded.
"On the Chinese web, searches for ‘A4’ and ‘white paper’ have been censored" ~Alec Ash https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/november/blank-sheets-of-paper ht @heidilifeldman @Cyberflaneurs
Now would be a great time to call your representative and urge them to vote for including seven paid sick days in the deal Congress is likely to impose on railroad workers. It’s really the least they can do in exchange for taking away workers’ right to strike for a better bargain.
see @ddayen https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1597780273470414848
screw the ferrari, what i’m jealous of is your tax system.
@ryanlcooper on “butter-smooth” taxation in the Faroe Islands. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/11/30/the-best-tax-system-on-earth/
Bernie Sanders perhaps saving Democrats from the absolute catastrophe that just throwing labor under the bus would be.
see birdsite https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1597752246564843520
A thread on the birdsite worth reading, a huge regression in public transparency. A world in which everywhere is the Cook Islands or the Caymans or Delaware or South Dakota is not a better world. https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588203439284225
Since it's "Giving Tuesday" here's my philanthropic advice: help people you know. 501(c)3 status doesn't make a recipient more worthy. Give to people and organizations that are a part of your life, to whom and from whom your relationship is more than just financial, about whom you will naturally remain informed. I won't say that giving money to arms-length philanthropies with professional fundraising staff is necessarily bad. I won't say it's good though.
if Congress imposes a deal upon them, would you support railroad workers if they chose to strike illegally?
(on birdsite the same poll from me came out 76.2% Yes, 23.8% No.)
the exercise of power can be embedded in what you seem to be ignoring (the supreme court does not hear the appeal) but that as a matter of obscure legal procedure you are actually undoing. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/opinion/supreme-court-decisions-vacated.html
“Here’s why I will never buy an HP printer again (this time for sure)” by Kevin Drum https://jabberwocking.com/heres-why-i-will-never-buy-an-hp-printer-again-this-time-for-sure/ // all the companies i loved in the nineties turned themselves into predators
“Hugh profits produced an enormous pool of money at the top of society, but precisely because the rich were getting so much, there was nowhere good to invest.” @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/economy/at-least-the-tech-winter-will-kill-off-some-zombie-companies/
one naturally feels a bit guilty if a toot goes viral.
This is a nadir for the internet as (my) republic of letters. The RSS feeds I still diligently follow have been a shadow of what they once were for years. Now, Twitter is declining, a rapid-fire recapitulation of what happened to my RSS, except on Twitter the reduction that remains is a darker and more poisonous than the ghosts of all those blogs. This, Mastodon, is a point of light, but not yet bright enough to compensate for what has been lost. Hopefully it continues to brighten.
People are dissing Elon Musk’s bold reforms at Twitter, but I think his efforts might really give truth.social a run for the money.
you hardened your heart in the name of justice.
and when all was said and done, all that was left—in your heart, in the world—was just ice.
An iceberg, contrasted against a stony cliff.
algorithmic bias and self-driving cars could bring all kinds of new excitement. it already feels like the traffic is a conspiracy against me.
