Huge decline of working class people in the arts reflects fall in wider society
“The proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s, new research shows.” #Culture [Link]
Latest
Be Wary of Imitating High-Status People Who Can Afford to Countersignal
“Successful people can afford to engage in countersignaling—doing things that signal high status because they are associated with low status. It is a form of self-handicapping, signaling that one is so well off that they can afford to engage in activities and behaviors that people typically associated with low
Coding
Playing with ActivityPub
“What I built isn’t an ActivityPub system as much as a Mastodon-compatible one. I think this is the key contradiction of the ActivityPub system: it’s a specification broad enough to encompass many different services, but ends up being too general to be useful by itself.” Interesting - I’
Exclusive: SBF secretly funded crypto news site The Block and its CEO's Bahamas apartment
“The Block, a media company that says it covers crypto news independently, has been secretly funded for over a year with money funneled to The Block's CEO from the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency trading firm, sources told Axios.” Real question: how much of the crypto ecosystem
Picket Line Notifier
“An open-source browser extension that alerts you when you navigate to a website belonging to an organization whose employees are on strike. You can then click on the notification to learn more about the strike. You can also click on the extension's icon in your browser's
Abusive Instagram, TikTok hashtags target women in politics: study
““There have been lots of commitments to helping protect women online during elections and at critical times,” Simmons said. “But what we found is that platforms are really falling short of enforcing their own terms of service.” One major revelation from their study was that platforms recommended abusive hashtags referencing
Electric car sales drive toward cleaner air, less mortality
“With fresher air [from EVs], in 27 years greater Los Angeles will have 1,163 fewer premature deaths annually, corresponding to $12.61 billion in improved economic health benefits. Greater New York City could see 576 fewer such deaths annually and have $6.24 billion in associated economic gains and
AI-generated content on Medium
Over on Medium, VP Content Scott Lamb asked: We’re curious what you think. How do you think Medium should approach AI-generated content? What are good and bad examples of AI content? What are you concerned about? What are you excited about? Here’s how I replied: I think my
Writing
Writing Is Magic
“There are many ways to be influential. You can form 1:1 relationships with people, have small group meetings, do talks, send out a code review, or argue in Slack. All of those can be valuable at the right time. But there's one tool that I choose most
We, the tweeters
“Musk and the far-right are not free speech absolutists. They veil their racism, misogyny, hate and institutional insurrection behind the cloak of free speech and the First Amendment. They claim that anyone who dares criticise them is cancelling them. They give speech a bad name.” #Media [Link]
The Respect for Marriage act doesn’t codify gay marriage
“The bill doesn’t codify the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that granted LGBTQ+ couples the right to marry. Instead, it forces states without marriage equality laws to recognize LGBTQ+ marriages from other states.” #Democracy [Link]
A new museum and clinic will honor the enslaved “Mothers of Gynecology”
“At that site, Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey, along with other enslaved women and girls whose names have been lost to history, shed blood for the creation of American gynecology, despite their inability to consent. It is also where they labored to run the “Negro hospital” and tend to the family