Commentary on links that caught my attention around the web.
Notable links
[Naseem S. Miller at the Journalist's Resource] A massive, last-minute data preservation effort was undertaken this week as important federal datasets were taken offline: "The new Trump administration has at least temporality halted most communications from the Department of Health and Human Services and has begun taking
Technology
[Herman Martinus] I recognize a lot of the sentiment here. Twenty years ago, I ran an open source social networking startup and tried to differentiate ourselves by saying many of these same things. "Bear won't sell. I'm not building this to flip it to the
Culture
[Adrian Hon] I was today years old when I learned the original meaning of an "adventure playground": "The post-war period saw “junk playgrounds” flourish as a kind of reparations for the trauma of war. They gave children the freedom to build, explore, experiment, and role play – and
Technology
[Ross Douthat and Marc Andreessen in The New York Times] This podcast conversation with Marc Andreessen is very revealing. It's particularly fascinating to me that what I experienced as "America finally having a much-needed moral awakening" presented to people like Andreessen as "radical Marxism"
Technology
[Taylor Lorenz at UserMag] This is like something from a cyberpunk novel: "The phrase “cute winter boots” is not about footwear. It's a code phrase being used to discuss resistance to Trump and how to fight back against the draconian immigration policies his administration is enacting. Users
Technology
[Mike Masnick at TechDirt] On Zuckerberg's claims about why he's changing Meta's fact-changing policy: "If you only remember two things about the government pressure campaign to influence Mark Zuckerberg’s content moderation decisions, make it these: Donald Trump directly threatened to throw Zuck
Notable links
[Ethan Zuckerman in The Atlantic] I completely agree with the points Ethan makes here. The TikTok ban was a spectacular own-goal for all kinds of reasons. In particular: "[...] This is a depressing moment for anyone who cherishes American protections for speech and access to information. In 1965, while the
AI
[Matthew Green] I think this is the most important discussion with respect to AI: "[...] I would say that AI is going to be the biggest privacy story of the decade. Not only will we soon be doing more of our compute off-device, but we’ll be sending a lot
Notable links
[David Marchese in The New York Times] This profile of Curtis Yarvin in the New York Times (paywalled, probably for the best) is far softer than it should have been, with far less formal fact-checking. It is of the moment, though: this guy’s writing is highly influential to the
Society
[Oliver Milman in The Guardian] Car culture isn't just physically bad for us, it affects us mentally too: "The car is firmly entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans, with more than nine in 10 households having at
Culture
[Joan Westenberg] An absolutely spot-on call to action: "Cynicism is the cheap seats. It’s the fast food of intellectual positions. Anyone can point at something and say it’s broken, corrupt, or destined to fail. The real challenge? Building something better. [...] Cynicism comes with hidden taxes. Every time
Notable links
[Dave Karpf at Tech Policy Press] Peter Thiel and other tech oligarchs are seeking to weaponize US foreign policy as a way to enforce their corporate agendas: "Thiel is developing a blueprint for putting Big Tech’s policy agenda at the center of US foreign policy. Australia’s social