As a business/technology journalist, I’ve covered many M&A deals. Often, they start hostile, then both parties reach a deal and it ends quietly.
Russia was just like that, but with tanks.
Ian Welsh predicts that the US will be a big loser of the Ukraine war, ending the US global hegemony. The war demonstrates that countries can successfully defy the US. China will support defiant nations against US sanctions.
Welsh makes a credible case. I’m insufficiently informed to have my own opinion.
Welsh’s article went up yesterday, before the latest shenanigans.
Yes, the war is going badly for Russia, and was even when Welsh posted. That does not undercut Welsh’s arguments.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that an American billionaire, in possession of sufficient fortune, must be in want of a Supreme Court justice.” (Alexandra Petri / The Washington Post)
Lemmy and Kbin potentially change the face of at least part of the Fediverse, making it more Reddit-like, focused on topics and content, rather than individual people.
“Stunning”—Midjourney update wows AI artists with camera-like feature (Ars Technica / Benj Edwards) You can zoom images out to show more background. Sweet!
I’ve surprised myself how much I enjoy playing with Midjourney. I’m not generally a visual-arts person.
Logseq vs Obsidian: find the best note app for productivity needs. I am occasionally tempted by Logseq. Stop me before I change note-taking apps again!
A viral search helped a radio host track down a man she spontaneously kissed at a music festival. (KTLA / Taylor Delandro) Aww.
Why Some Americans Buy Guns (NY Times / Roni Caryn Rabin) Confirming yet again that if you own a gun, it’s more likely to be used against you than against anybody else.
A Titanic Disparity in How the World Responds to Maritime Disasters “All travelers, whether migrants or millionaires, deserve rescue. The global response to the Titan’s disappearance should be the model for how we respond to migrant vessels in distress.” (Democracy Now!)
Hearbreaking details on the recent tragedy in which 700 people died when the refugee ship Adriana sank off the coast of Greece, under the watch of the Greek Coast Guard.
Still thinking about last night’s episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” It was about assimilation and passing, subjects close to me. I’m a Jewish American who mostly doesn’t act Jewish, sound Jewish, or even have a Jewish name. Passing is my default mode.
"…. Reddit is blindly following Digg’s failed path." (Steven Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet)
Gearlinx taps the cloud for ‘Network Resilience as a Service’. Gearlinx provides network resilience and network operations as a service, using cloud software and a hardware device it calls a Duckfone. I talked 1:1 with company president Todd Rychecky, who newly joins Gearlinx after 14 years at competitor Opengear. Read about it at Silverlinings. Thanks to Diana Goovaerts, who contributed to this story.
That was one of the best Star Trek episodes I’ve ever seen. Moving and inspirational.
We often get caught up condemning America’s failures, when what we should be doing is inspiring America to live up to its highest self. Why did so many Japanese-Americans who were interned wrongly during World War II go on to live as patriots?
I was just reminded that we moved to San Francisco on Halloween and moved away on Halloween. This seems somehow significant.
Oracle says ‘oui’ to European cloud sovereignty. Big Red launches EU Sovereign Cloud to help enterprises satisfy European data privacy and sovereignty regulations. My latest, on Silverlinings.
Whenever I hear an anti-woke clown going on about soyboys, alpha males, beta males, and the importance of traditional masculinity, I think: A foundational value of traditional masculinity is physical courage.
I want to ask the clown: How much bullfighting have you done? What mountains have you climbed? What’s your military combat record?
I like a latte now and then, a beverage that wingnuts denounce fervently, enjoyment of which is a sure marker of beta males. When I have a latte, it’s soy or oat milk because regular milk makes me fart something fierce. Is farting an alpha-male thing?
Seven Rules For Internet CEOs To Avoid Enshittification (Mike Masnick / Techdirt)
These are good rules for building a healthy Internet business, or a healthy business of any kind. All the rules are built on the first: “Tell your investors that you’re in this for the long haul and they need to be too.”
Also: Treat the users as the cherished asset that make your site useful and valuable. Users are not products that should be exploited and used up.
When the press talks about the layoffs and chaos generated by a series of completely pointless mergers the blame always falls on ambiguities like a “weakening macroeconomy” and not, say, blistering incompetence by the fail upwards trust fund brunch-lords in the c-suite, obsessed with setting their brands on fire just for a tax break and a fat bonus.
— Warner Bros Discovery Merger Gets Dumber As Layoffs Continue And Company Licenses Streaming Content To… Netflix. (Karl Bode / Techdirt)
“Cellphones were for emergencies, or for calling people when you were drunk.” Dan Kois at Slate asks fellow GenXers to reminisce about technology, work, socializing and entertainment in the long-ago time of 2002.