Steve Randy Waldman

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Last Notes

2024-08-13 05:15:03

Solicitations of political cash by e-mail and text are a pox. What I wouldn’t give for a campaign that got in touch to meaningfully communicate with me rather than to milk me.

2024-08-12 07:03:58

photographs of kamala’s long slim fingers are AI deep fakes.

2024-07-29 09:30:12

there’s no shame in feeling ashamed.

2024-07-28 03:34:22

- reply

@npub1jma…0as2 ?

2024-07-26 18:02:41

politics is polarized between people
for whom freedom is a good the state secures against people for whom freedom is a good the state threatens.
both valorize freedom, but with quite different implications.

2024-07-25 22:38:05

[new draft post] We have not been betrayed https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/07/25/we-have-not-been-betrayed/index.html

2024-07-24 21:35:20

we are all made by our institutions more than we make them, but we still have to make them.

2024-07-03 00:48:49

Sometimes when Congressional candidates become unable to contest an election, the spouse has subbed in. (See e.g. Lisa Murkowski, who is still in the US Senate.)
Is Jill Biden a potential candidate?
(I'm not trying to comment one way or another on the advisability or perhaps absurdity of that.)

2024-06-27 04:07:39

It seems to me this makes factual claims that are simply untrue. Not contestable claims about politics, but statements about events that did not in fact occur, intended to manipulate the recipient.
Why is that permissible in political advertising?
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/686/132/160/772/027/original/9b0c9752ae3eee7e.png

2024-06-19 03:38:21

is “influencer marketing” unethical? more or less unethical than other forms of advertising? (it strikes me as pretty close to traditional celebrity endorsement advertising, so maybe any critiques apply to that too?)

2024-06-18 21:42:59

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@npub147l…vyrc Chomsky.

2024-06-18 21:39:44

I met him once. I have mixed feelings about his views and influence. But he was a gentleman to me.

2024-06-18 20:19:43

how to persuade the public that Donald Trump is not Johnny Cash.

2024-06-17 19:01:53

it’s not indentured servitude. it’s cloud-native.

2024-06-15 01:43:03

sometimes you miss gender people when you mister gender them.

2024-06-15 01:39:07

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@npub1q8n…kct8 richer than us is fine. rich enough to live lives entirely apart and own mass media is not.

2024-06-15 01:11:35

maybe musk wouldn't pay himself so much if he faced a 94% marginal tax rate.
just spitballin' here!

2024-06-13 18:46:25

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@npub1jma…0as2 or perhaps “abstract”.

2024-06-13 18:12:12

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@npub1jma…0as2 i agree. it’s time to renounce this getting older thing.

2024-06-13 17:58:30

sometimes i notice myself disliking people then i dislike myself even more.

2024-06-10 22:55:04

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UPDATE: 10 minutes before their close time, after about an hour of trying, the endless oscillations between hold music, recordings, and ring tones was interrupted with a human voice and an appointment was made.
Fourteen miles (round trip) of carbon burden avoided!

2024-06-10 22:47:37

i think i will have to drive seven miles, physically go to the kid's doctor's office, to make an appointment for him. the online and telephone systems are simply beyond my capacities to penetrate.

2024-06-10 21:30:58

What is the best plaintext editor for less technical people?
Like, if a non technical friend was going to edit some config or a bit of boilerplatey code.
Notepad / TextEdit wouldn't be great, but neither would emacs or vim (and they're not going to mess with any IDE).

2024-06-10 18:26:27

this post could have been a meeting.

2024-05-30 23:46:55

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@npub1q8n…kct8 i wish i knew!

2024-05-30 23:45:56

so much talk (however unmoored) about a withdrawal and an open Democratic convention. any such talk on the R side?

2024-05-28 08:12:52

can LLMs do standup comedy?

2024-05-27 22:07:30

I spent much of the weekend adding support for update histories with links to prior revisions and diffs to my static site generator.
I'm not quite sure why I did this. Neuroticism is neuroticism. But if you care I am fishing for feedback so I can pretend it made any sense to do this. Here's an example. https://tech.interfluidity.com/xml/iffy/index.html#major-updates

2024-05-27 10:09:46

what would be the bigger injustice, outright confiscation of 99% of every centibillionaire’s wealth, or how half the world lives every day?

2024-05-17 11:35:35

there is only one homeland and we all share it.

2024-05-09 03:24:57

starbucks wrote to say my stars are expiring soon very kind of them to write but they didn't have to tell me man do i feel it.

2024-05-07 15:10:13

Please make sure it is signed by the required date.

2024-04-30 17:51:18

even a bad seed can with care and time grow into a wonderful tree.

2024-04-29 21:20:06

This is just a weird movement.
It's just trying to appeal along entirely different dimensions than a conventional campaign. It's parasocial rather than political.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/356/109/973/356/090/original/028d4813fc93c22a.png

2024-04-24 02:45:45

https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/323/430/953/869/930/original/57b158be4ed31eef.jpeg

2024-04-18 16:31:13

the practice many browsers have adopted of truncating URLs in the address bar to the hostname is emblematic of the decline and commercially driven infantilization of the web.
understanding URLs — their roles and the ways and whys of how they are constructed — was an elementary skill of the original view-source web.
hiding complete URLs encourages people to become ignorant consumers of mysterious information services, rather than informed participants in a public forum.

2024-04-16 23:22:16

many components of computers have to be manufactured in large-scale, distant factories, but that doesn't make local-first software not a great idea.
some aspects of the training of AI systems may necessarily be large-scale and distant (and perhaps regulated or even public), but that doesn't make local-first AI a bad idea.
the closer to locally controlled your computation (defined socially more than geographically), the more likely it is to tilt toward the liberatory rather than the dystopian.

2024-04-12 16:26:22

the path to freedom isn't to make hairshirt consumer choices, but to retake for the broad public and deploy state power. cf @npub1hyk…3p33 https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/12/give-me-convenience/

2024-04-11 17:46:06

[new draft post] Indirection and the character of capitalism (Part II) https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/04/11/indirection-and-the-character-of-capitalism-part-ii/index.html

2024-04-11 07:09:43

“Fresh Kitchen” wasn’t the first thing I thought.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/250/858/998/968/739/original/b689bacaf11df266.jpeg

2024-04-05 03:49:52

[new draft post] Indirection and the character of capitalism (Part I) https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/04/04/indirection-and-the-character-of-capitalism-part-i/index.html

2024-04-03 11:18:25

the docs treat us as second class, but i feel like this is a win for team Type=forking

2024-04-02 05:36:20

if israel provokes a broader war i wonder what happens to taiwan.

2024-04-01 15:04:30

some people celebrate today like it’s special, but i am a fool every day of the year.

2024-04-01 00:12:22

a useful antidote to the broadbrush narrative that Israel is simply insisting Gaza starve.
i hope #KevinDrum's empirics and moderation are broadly right, but i have very little confidence, the information environment surrounding Israel/Palestine is too thick to cut through.
https://jabberwocking.com/how-much-aid-is-gaza-getting/

2024-03-31 07:24:16

soon our authorized deep-fake spatial videoconferencing avatars will be so much better acted than we are IRL, in-person interaction will come to seem flat, off.

2024-03-31 06:58:42

“the internet interprets privacy as damage, and routes around it.”

2024-03-31 05:34:41

- reply

@npub1jma…0as2 being concerned about and supporting the interests of the other.

2024-03-31 00:54:09

what if Biden trolled everybody and declared March 31 as the furry day of visibility too and dressed up as the Easter Bunny and bounced around the South Lawn while photo-op kids hunt for colored eggs?

2024-03-29 22:53:26

there's no question that the United States has been a very devoted ally to Israel.
has Israel been a devoted ally to the United States?

2024-03-22 17:54:03

“Bruce Schneier has a name for this practice: ‘feudal security.’ That's when you cede control over your device to a Big Tech warlord whose "walled garden" becomes a fortress that defends you against external threats… The keyword here is external threats. When Apple itself threatens your privacy, the fortress becomes a prison.” @npub1hyk…3p33 https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money ht @npub1jyk…ypun

2024-03-22 16:57:27

is it too gross a kind of self-promotion to boost when people link to your shit?

2024-03-21 14:41:25

"This is in the tech playbook. When you're growing, you want everything to be open. When there aren't any more users to get from other places, well, that was a nice idea." @npub16gl…syzj http://scripting.com/2024/03/20.html#a163628

2024-03-16 04:01:08

https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/103/133/236/042/367/original/9dea50aea81d9bef.jpeg

2024-03-13 21:16:39

i’d support a law that made it impossible for tiktok to operate as it does, as long as it was equitable and made it impossible for facebook, instagram, twitter, and youtube to operate as they do. i trust the Chinese Communist Party to act in the US public interest about as much as i trust Elon Musk to.

2024-03-13 06:22:03

“In reality equity and fairness are narrowly defined, contextual notions. When we decide it’s fair to use a FICO score in order to determine an interest rate on a loan, that’s very different from using a FICO score to decide how many weeks of unemployment insurance you should receive after breaking your leg. You cannot decide that ‘FICO scores are legitimate discriminators’ as a universal rule, just as ‘diverse skin tones and genders’ is not a universal good” #CathyONeil https://mathbabe.org/2024/03/12/googles-mistake-with-gemini/

2024-03-11 06:40:20

i have come to have a very negative reaction to high quality user-interfaces. not just dark patterns and stuff like that, but genuine user-interface quality.
UI quality is painstaking and expensive, much more than most backend functionality. i associate investment in UI with well-funded growth-seeking ventures, and i associate those kinds of ventures with traps, enshittification, neofeudalism. 1/

2024-03-03 21:03:31

c3p0 is a JDBC Connection pooling library I first published in 2002. It is very old-school, but i like to think it is still cool.
c3p0 v0.10.0 is the first major release — well, the first release at all — in a very long time. It now includes pluggable threading with loom support, much simplified connection testing by default, a more modern, more automated build, and many many fixes, improvements and enhancements.
https://github.com/swaldman/c3p0
https://www.mchange.com/projects/c3p0/
#java #jdbc

2024-03-03 00:16:51

as you get older, you find it harder to be young.

2024-03-02 17:35:25

"Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent." @npub1hyk…3p33 https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/

2024-03-01 21:11:08

oh thank god. https://mastodon.social/@macrumors/112022245140125726

2024-02-29 18:37:41

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@npub1jma…0as2 i think to the degree people are conscious that their wealth comes from some sort of predation — think the Sacklers, or the PE looters @npub1hyk…3p33 writes about, or doctors knowingly over-recommending procedures, etc — they hold their victims in contempt, as being a lesser kind of person who might succumb to these kinds of things, and therefore deserving of what they get.

2024-02-29 18:06:20

[new draft post] What you are doing right now https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/02/29/what-you-are-doing-right-now/index.html

2024-02-29 07:06:06

"Even the worst crimes we commit for hate are nothing compared to the crimes we commit for greed." @npub1hyk…3p33 https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/
// our greed and hatreds tend to be mutually reinforcing. we find it easy to gin up hate, or at least contempt, for those whom it is profitable to exploit. and then we sleep easily on our hordes because after all they are only getting what they deserve.

2024-02-26 21:49:03

if you imagine that all contactees at the start of your marketing funnel suffer 1¢ in hassle when processing each communication, what is the externalized cost of your campaign?

2024-02-26 14:33:33

i mean, if you can get away with it, it was God’s will, right?

2024-02-25 09:03:24

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@npub1jma…0as2 which is another way of saying the public requires governance, because absent governance there is only a brutal game of thrones to usurp power.
anarchists may wish we had a solution to this other than someone, or, better still, some set of responsive and permeable institutions, winning the prize.
we all may wish for a lot of things.

2024-02-25 04:18:59

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(4) the only possible governance, then, becomes the plutocratic authoritarianism which they’d have no incentive to sabotage
(5) since the broad public requires a governed world even more than it requires governance in its interest, eventually it succumbs.

2024-02-25 04:18:47

a sequence:
(1) you let the plutocrats return (by repealing 90%+ top marginal tax rates)
(2) they become phenomenally wealthy and their interests diverge sharply from those of the broad public
(3) they fund industry upon industry — trad media, influencers, think tanks, politics consultants — to heighten conflict and stoke division in order to paralyze democratic governance
(cont’d)

2024-02-23 14:13:20

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@npub1jma…0as2 it’s the imagined people shrieking at you that makes writing text so psychologically difficult, yes.

2024-02-22 23:34:36

as a psychological matter, writing software is so much easier than writing text.

2024-02-19 15:29:12

“Part-time work can also be a means of control. Because employers have total discretion over hours, they can use reduced schedules to punish employees who complain or seem likely to unionize — even though workers can’t legally be fired for union-related activity — while more pliant workers are rewarded with better schedules.”
My sister #AdelleWaldman has a great op-ed in The New York Times today. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/opinion/part-time-workers-usa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Wk0.v6s_.9JWuaBzNIRdr&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2024-02-18 23:21:03

much nobler than the fight is creating the conditions for or helping to sustain the conditions of an imperfectly but largely just peace.

2024-02-17 01:58:30

The meeting has been terminated.

2024-02-16 19:24:10

This is a paid post.

2024-02-12 05:46:02

a graph.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1gpS4
cc @npub1caz…2vwk

2024-02-12 05:02:25

[new draft post] Situated versus unsituated virtues https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/02/11/situated-versus-unsituated-virtues/index.html

2024-02-12 00:31:38

just used a credit card at a café. no other identification provided, just tapped the screen. it was enough to get me opted in to a Cash app rewards program and SMS list.

2024-02-10 04:35:15

Ignore this post and nothing will happen.

2024-02-09 20:18:58

Another reason to go hard on antitrust:
Too big to fail is also too big to jail, kryptonite to rule of law and the legitimacy of the state.

2024-02-09 20:16:49

I mean Pizzagate isn't real, but it's hard to blame people for getting confused when all that #MoeTkacik details here is real.
On Boeing, with a sidelight of Epstein, the subject of a prior conspiracy to let off easy.
https://prospect.org/justice/2024-02-09-boeing-max-doj-epstein-deal/
#MaureenTkacik

2024-02-07 00:22:42

because we assiduously attribute suicide to mental illness alone, and we enforce a shroud of privacy over each occurrence, we as a public have little understanding of why people choose to kill themselves in our society.
is there contemporary, anonymized social science that takes seriously the problems and stated concerns of people who kill themselves? or is it taboo now to consider any sort of attribution beyond a "struggle with mental illness"?
remember Durkheim?

2024-02-06 17:42:15

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@npub1t08…wqkp (i still haven't heard the Luke Combs cover, except the Grammy's duet. for those of us of a certain age, i think, it's all Tracy, plus something like hope in the oddity of the collaboration.)

2024-02-06 17:32:58

it's interesting how universal it was among people of a certain age to burst into tears upon exposure to the Tracy Chapman / Luke Combs performance of "Fast Car".
i tried to explain to my immigrant wife, but i was at a loss.
here's #SarahKendzior https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/driving-in-circles

2024-02-05 21:28:16

Buffering…

2024-02-04 17:54:24

i stand humbled by your company's bold new vision.

2024-02-04 02:00:20

"I Ask Seven Heretical Questions About Progress" #TedGioia https://www.honest-broker.com/p/i-ask-seven-heretical-questions-about
(ht Tom A. I think!)

2024-01-31 15:06:19

One thing chat-gpt is good for is a thesaurus.

2024-01-31 01:44:14

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@npub1jma…0as2 https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/s/ity2PjjB2C

2024-01-31 01:05:10

it isn’t really democracy until i get to choose my own judge and jury. #ConsentOfTheGoverned

2024-01-30 20:52:50

Must.
Or else it’s a thousand dollar brick.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/111/846/645/135/049/930/original/db24da1a9ac36173.jpeg

2024-01-29 07:32:03

"UNRWA is paid to support people in refugee camps as refugees, and the UNHCR is paid to get people out of refugee status and to become normal citizens. This, along with its focus on only one group of displaced people does not produce best outcomes for the people that they ostensibly support." @npub1uk4…cmck https://40yrs.blogspot.com/2024/01/unrwa-is-problematic.html

2024-01-27 07:17:15

I dropped dropbox for sync.com, but I’m having problems now with sync.com. Any other recommendations for this kind of service?
I’d think about self-hosting, but I don’t know an economical way of setting up a server with ~2TB of not-cold storage.
(I don’t want to physically self-host. I want sync and backup reliably available if my house burns down and when I travel.)

2024-01-26 21:05:41

When you think a person is extremely wrong, but the whole reason you do the things you do is in hopes you'll make some small difference so that people like him can look back and say they were right all along.
#KevinDrum on his historicostatistical pollyannaism. https://jabberwocking.com/just-how-bad-are-things-really/

2024-01-25 04:08:36

he hires the best people.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/111/814/376/342/299/031/original/deea51eac18b6b43.png

2024-01-23 15:41:24

people who trust themselves too much are untrustworthy.

2024-01-21 19:42:07

Hi!
If you are crazy enough to want to, you can now subscribe to my drafts blog as an e-mail newsletter: https://drafts.interfluidity.com/subscribe.html
drafts is a statically generated sites. e-mail subscriptions are built on a very general platform i've built for converting RSS feeds to newsletters and other forms of notification, suitable for use with any kind of RSS source, including statically generated sites.
please get in touch if this might be of use or interest to you!
#RSS

2024-01-20 10:22:52

growth is a bad metaphor for economic change, so degrowth is as well.

2024-01-19 15:46:12

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@npub1jma…0as2 i don’t think he’s claiming German democracy was “never restored” even until today. he’s pointing out democracy ended until the military defeat of the Nazis. Gerrymandering is a longstanding practice + problem in the US, but not to the level where control of government at every level has not been competitive, despite a divided or even opposed public. now that’s increasingly the case at state & local levels, and the fear is that it could soon be at the Federal level.

2024-01-19 15:03:45

“Israel’s genocide, US assistance, and consequences thereof” by #ThomasPalley https://thomaspalley.com/?p=2386