Mitch's Blog

kottke.org: Jamelle Bouie “chastises American political & cultural pundits for their lack of moral seriousness w/r/t their focus on ‘wokeness’ instead of the real harms being done by the authoritarian Trump regime.”

MAGA is building concentration camps, purging Blacks from high levels of the military, taking billions of dollars in bribes, murdering protesters, protecting pedophiles, committing violent insurrection and protecting those insurrectionists, “imprisoning dissidents, dismantling public education and eroding democracy.

Meanwhile, pundits are concerned about pronouns.

Le Guin: “We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called ‘technology’ at all…. One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty ‘hi,’ is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to make one? Anybody who ever lighted a fire without matches has probably gained some proper respect for ‘low’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘simple’ technologies; anybody who ever lighted a fire with matches should have the wits to respect that notable hi-tech invention.”

Corporate Power Approaches Escape Velocity. Hamilton Nolan: A failed Tesla strike in Sweden is a flashing warning light.

An example of this phenomenon, showing it’s not limited to young people: I recently re-read “Fer de Lance,” the first Nero Wolfe detective novel, published in 1934. Two of the characters are wealthy heirs, young men, who have become infatuated with flying. One has a private airfield, owns his own plane and employs a full-time mechanic, the other is studying flying with the first young man and plans to found an airline.

The first time I read the novel, when I was in my 20s, I did not make the connection that the Wright Brothers had first flown 30 years earlier. This was new technology then. These two young men were the equivalent of today’s billionaires investing in AI.

Zoomers don’t know what Usenet is.

Allegra Rosenberg has a good explanation, and she continues with a meditation on misconceptions that Generation Z have about life in the 90s and 2000s.

This misunderstanding is not unique to GenZ; I think it’s a phenomenon of being in one’s 20s. I remember reading Dickens...

mitchwagner.com

Zoomers don’t know what Usenet is.

Allegra Rosenberg has a good explanation, and she continues with a meditation on misconceptions that Generation Z have about life in the 90s and 2000s.

This misunderstanding is not unique to GenZ; I think it’s a phenomenon of being in one’s 20s. I remember reading Dickens (possibly “David Copperfield”) and coming across a casual mention of the main character sending his wife a letter one morning — he worked on one side of London, lived on another side, and expected the letter to arrive that afternoon. Mail delivery in London at that time was twice a day; people used the post like texting or email today — it was slower of course but you could still count on getting a message to someone the same day. I found that fascinating!

Rosenberg doesn’t mention Reddit. I think a good explanation of Usenet is that it was like Reddit but it was primarily text-based and complete distributed. It was not owned by a single company.

An 18-year-old San Diego man pledd guilty to kicking a sea lion on a viral video. Sea lions are generally unthreatening but they are wild animals and will attack if stressed or threatened. They can get up to 200-800 pounds and have sharp teeth. I watched the video of that kid; he was cruelly picking on an animal that did him no harm. He’s lucky that a criminal sentence is the only penalty he received and if the sea lion had attacked him back, I would have thought of it as evolution in action.

“The Social Ritual That Made Me a Better Man: Long live guys' night." “… the couple of evenings a month that I shared with Steve and the others became for me a safe and premeditated truancy from domestic commitments. The ceremony amounted to a pressure valve. Once released, it sent us home tired and inebriated but also kinder, happier, and more giving.” By Thomas Chatterton Williams at The Atlantic.

Sailors in the USS Lincoln and their families are suffering low morale and mental illness due to long deployment. Multiple sailors have tried to go overboard.