“This question has two parts, neither of which have anything to do with the other or the subject at hand. Also, this question has four parts.” Every Question In Every Q&A Session Ever.
Daring Fireball: “Colonel Harland Sanders, who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken, sold the company to a conglomerate in 1964, and then remained their paid spokesman for the remainder of his life, despite the fact that he despised their food and professed deep regret that he sold the chain.”
I’ve been using Zoom several times per week for three years. It’s been my go-to videoconferencing service. I need to think about whether to stay with it.
Oracle expands its hybrid cloud footprint to the enterprise. My latest: Big Red introduces Compute Cloud@Customer, a microcosm of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that runs in the customer data center.
The dirty little secret that could bring down Big Tech. New research reveals that Silicon Valley uses predatory pricing to crush competitors and scam investors — evidence the government can use to bust up tech monopolies.
Cory Doctorow: “Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster: From the same parasites that infected your hospital’s emergency room and sucked Toys R Us dry.”
Caleb Sasser writes about “Turn-On,” a legendary hyperactive sketch comedy show from “Laugh-In”’s creators, canceled in 1969 midway through its first episode, reportedly because it was too far ahead of its time. The show disappeared for 54 years but surfaced (possibly illegally) on YouTube. Via Waxy
Life before cellphones: The barely believable after-work activities of young people in 2002. “I never knew what time it was, so I was constantly buying watches and losing them.”
Don’t give your heart to Bluesky or Threads
Cory Doctorow hasn’t joined Bluesky or Threads, and is sticking with Mastodon, because Bluesky and Threads aren’t federated and Mastodon is. Bluesky and Threads have captive user bases, while Mastodon users are free to leave.
Cory Doctorow:Fool Me Twice We Don’t Get Fooled Again: There’s a crucial difference between federatable and federated.
Cory is also on Tumblr, which isn’t federated either, and he doesn’t talk about why he’s there. I suspect his reasons are the same as mine for being on both Tumblr and Facebook: I’ve been on Facebook and Tumblr for years, and made connections on those platforms. I don’t want to just walk away from that.
Indeed, 80% of my social media conversations are on Facebook. If I could only stay on one social media platform, it would be the Facebook blue app. I wish that were not the case.
(Cory isn’t on Facebook. Smart man, Cory.)
And Cory leaves off my primary reason for focusing on ActivityPub-enabled platforms, specifically micro.blog and Mastodon: They have legs. They’ll be around. I invested a lot of time and energy in Google+, only to watch all of that vanish. I don’t want to repeat that mistake.
Mastodon was announced in 2016. The ActivityPub standard launched in 2018. Those technologies have legs. The Lindy Effect suggests they’ll be around for several more years at least.
Bluesky has been around only a few months, and it’s still in closed beta. Threads have been around only a few weeks, and it’s still in alpha. Maybe they’ll be around a long time. Maybe they’ll be fly-by-night. I don’t see any reason to rush onto those platforms. There is no early adopter benefit to social media. If those platforms are a big deal in a year or two or five, I can think then about whether to jump on.
Yes, Bluesky, Threads and Tumblr all say they will federate. Bluesky has its own protocol for that, and Threads and Tumblr say they’ll adopt ActivityPub. Let’s talk again if those things actually happen.
I already spend too much time staring at screens. I’m reluctant to invest much time in Bluesky and Threads.
Douglas Rushkoff: Embracing the Impossible. What if magic is our most probable path to a sustainable future?. We’re not going to be able to engineer our way out of the numerous global crises we face.
Paul Reubens Never Got the Critical Reappraisal He Deserved. Reubens brought joy to millions. Many friends came forward after his death to testify as to his generosity and kindness. This article makes a compelling case that even in his sex crimes, he didn’t hurt anyone or do anything wrong.
The American Dream has lost its hustle: Young workers just aren’t buying it
Felix Salmon at Axios: Even before the pandemic, young people mistrusted capitalism. “Now, with a strong labor market at their backs, they are increasingly proud of, and being lauded for, turning the tables on their employers – the exploited have become the exploiters.” The behavior now called “quiet quitting” is nothing new: the phrase “phoning it in” dates back to 1938 “and the novelty then was the phone, not the conduct.”
According to Axios, what’s new is that people used to be ashamed of slacking off and now they’re proud of it.
The 1999 movie “Office Space” came this close to making slacking off heroic – but then, in the final scene, it turns out that the protagonist, Peter Gibbons, is perfectly happy to put in an honest day’s work after all. It wasn’t the all-American paragon of hard work he was rebelling against, just soulless corporate drudgery.
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Hard work used to be part and parcel of the American Dream. For millions of younger workers, that’s no longer the case.
I wonder whether young people are really lazier today, or have they returned to a more healthy view of work being a part of a balanced life? Most people shouldn’t live to work; they should work to live.
Jo Walton at Tor.com: The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein’s Juveniles. Thanks, Cory!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” musical episode trivia
Actor Bruce Horak, who played Hemmer, returns as the Klingon general. In real life, the actor performs in a musical group, the Railbirds, which explains his superior singing chops.
And Christina Chong, who plays La’an, and Celia Rose Gooding, who plays Uhura, both have musical theater backgrounds. Gooding got a Tony nomination for her performance on Broadway in “Jagged Little Pill.”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Just Pulled Off a Secret Cameo | Den of Geek
Lin-Manuel Miranda is reportedly turning The Warriors into a stage musical. I’ll watch whatever Lin-Manuel Miranda does next but this seems like maybe not the best idea?
