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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: February 15th, 2025

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  • Most news sites ask me to consent to google tracking or pay, neither of which am I prepared to do in almost all cases. I am sure I am not alone in this. Their decision to align with google in this way is more than a turn off, it is an indication of their untrustworthiness.

    I shouldn’t need to explain why I do everything I can to avoid being tracked by the likes of google. The idea that I will pay to be subject to propaganda died with the 20th century. If news outlets want my eyes on their pages they need to come up with a way to make it worth my time.

    We need new search. Really we need a new web.

    Blockchain’s immutability might serve a public record of ‘news’, even moreso if combined with certificate verified identity on information disseminating ‘social’ media. The blockchain could actually be useful in this case. You don’t have to link your irl identity to your internet identity everywhere, but it might not be a bad idea in the areas of information disseminating social media. These are just idle thoughts.

    Edit - I saw a post today purporting to be a twitter screen grab of a James Woods post with a reply. The James Woods post was a screengrab of a video, supposedly of the current LA riots, with a comment along the lines of: Democrats can’t talk about peaceful protest and support this. Following this was a reply saying ‘this video is from 2020’.

    I have no idea if either or both of these tweets happened, if the video was from 2020, or if either person were who they said they were! With the blockchain’s immutability you could verify all of this automatically, and algorithmically reduce the reach of repeat offenders’ posts.

    There is a lot of value in this in terms of public discourse.

    Similar processes could happen with both scientific/academic papers and government policy v. outcomes.

    It might change the nature of the public debate.




  • And not asking for it will kill whatever remains of the creative industries.

    What do you want, a few years of ai slop followed by the more or less rapid decline of the internet (as it is overwhelmed with model collapse creative works and untrustable content) that will afford the likes of Clegg (in his role of ‘meta’ executive) a huge payout, or creative people having any hope of a sustained ability to make a living?

    I know what I would prefer and I also know what is most likely going to happen. This is the result of decades of neo-liberal fossil-fuel-powered capitalism.


  • The relevant context is first Bretton Woods, then Nixon abandoning the gold standard, and the petrodollar arrangement.

    Clearly the US dollar needed, and needs, international acceptance if it is to be global reserve currency. This is changing of course, and perhaps the US could abandon the late 20th century economic order entirely in one move as you suggest (more than they already are), but good luck buying stuff from other countries with dollars in that circumstance. What is North Korea’s currency worth these days?


  • I have a degree, and was a lecturer. Assuming I didn’t want to be a public figure who might get found out in the future, or I didn’t need a specific education for obvious professions - medicine/engineering or whatever, I would just lie and say I had a degree. Here in the UK no one checks. I only need to learn prompt engineering anyway. What’s the point? I don’t think it is worth the lesser UK cost is it?




  • Post-modernism laid the groundwork for an ‘I have my facts and you have yours’ culture. Or call it ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’. Community has been replaced by an atomised screen time facing our individual echo chambers. Decades of neoliberalism has impoverished swathes of the population, materially and intellectually. There are many chickens coming home to roost.