📡 – 2025-02-24
A good tool disappears into its use
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I’m sure it’s not a monumental insight, and one that has been written about elsewhere that I just haven’t seen but: I made the mistake of reading some comments under a few videos and news stories about the various federal workers whose jobs have been cut. The story is a familiar one now: selfless folks, dedicated to service, extremely hard working, who were summarily axed and now … the trees they clear from roads, the mines they stop from collapsing, the hospitals in which they research cancer treatments, etc are left to do whatever it is those things might do without those people around.
There were expected outpourings of support and regret and shame in these comments and but then also amongst them the admonishments of folks on the right that everyone was taking this far too seriously. The government is bloated, they say, and jobs need to get cut, and so these people … well they probably weren’t really needed. And so they got cut, they say. The government is full of people taking checks, who aren’t doing anything, they say, and well you can’t prove these weren’t those people.
It strikes me, reading this, that contrary to what they may say about themselves, and the popular way they are understood, the American Right may be amongst the most systems-trustingest people around. Nowhere in their finger-wagging screeds about the need to deal with government waste is an admission that perhaps the effort of individual people, en masse, is what leads to a functioning federal infrastructure. To these commenters – who I will admit are possibly a small subset of the participants in the right’s political project, though I suspect they do speak quite accurately for the larger group – it seems an impossible thought that the removal of a person results in the removal of services, and therefore their outcomes. The system, they seem to think, will fill in the gaps; it will get taken care of. This was the waste that needed removing, and it has been removed. Now! Back to the mines, uncollapsed.
It reminds me, as many things do these days, of the idea that a good tool disappears into its use. The more effective something is as doing what it is intended to, the more we forget that thing really even exists (in a sense). Until, of course, it breaks – and we are left to contend with several simultaneous, and perhaps shocking, losses.
Anyway … on to the stuff I liked.
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Local news deserves high marks for coverage of the doge fallout
Local news deserves high marks for coverage of the doge fallout
Reporters are telling gripping human stories, connecting the dots from DC to main street, going beyond acronyms to explain what government agencies do & giving voice to concerns of regular people
This first-person account of the deceitful firing process from an Illinois USDA worker in the Champaign News Gazette stood out: "There is no civility in this, no courage, no honor, no consideration for the citizen employee." On Iowa’s KCCI-TV, fired National Park Ranger Brian Gibbs said “It felt merciless. I felt violated, very disheartening."
In the Salt Lake Tribune, Allison Stegner, a researcher for the National Geological Survey in Utah questioned whether any of this really has to do with cost-savings: “Now, rather than paying income taxes in Utah and continuing to work sustaining the health of the federal lands that fuel Utah’s economy, I am applying for unemployment in Utah.”
Local journalists are tracking the negative impacts of these massive changes on their communities.
Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress
Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress - by kyla scanlon
AI, volatility, and changing institutions
But during times of uncertainty, people tend to retreat to the edges. With AI, we're not just watching an economic transformation, we're witnessing the birth of entirely new ways of understanding who we are and how we fit into the world. For better or worse, the rise of figures like Andrew Tate alongside the growth of democratic socialist movements among young people are competing narratives about how to make sense of a world where traditional economic stories no longer work. I mean Argentina (the country) launched a $4b memecoin that thousands of people lost millions of dollars on and the President is now trying to back out of responsibility for.
Of course nothing makes sense anymore.
How COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right
COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right - The Atlantic
Research suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific and political authorities.
Another way that COVID may have accelerated young people’s Rechtsruck in America and around the world was by dramatically reducing their physical-world socializing. That led, in turn, to large increases in social-media time that boys and girls spent alone. The Norwegian researcher Ruben B. Mathisen has written that “social media [creates] separate online spheres for men and women.” By trading gender-blended hangouts in basements and restaurants for gender-segregated online spaces, young men’s politics became more distinctly pro-male—and, more to the point, anti-feminist, according to Mathisen. Norwegian boys are more and more drawn to right-wing politics, a phenomenon “driven in large part by a new wave of politically potent anti-feminism,” he wrote. Although Mathisen focused on Nordic youth, he noted that his research built on a body of survey literature showing that “the ideological distance between young men and women has accelerated across several countries.”
The Evolution of ‘Gooning,’ From Urban Dictionary To Zoomer Insult
What is Gooning? A Classy Guide to Explaining This Viral Term
What is gooning? The answer my horrify you, or fill you with a joy that takes hours to resolve. Trust us, you won't want to Google this one.
Going back even further, porn was shot on DVDs or VHS tapes or else was limited to magazines. It was much rarer to stumble across. Just ask anyone over 40, and they probably have a story about the excitement of finding a ragged old porno mag in the woods as a kid.
The Other Constitutional Crisis
The Other Constitutional Crisis - by Sherrilyn Ifill
Trump Now Leads the Fight Against the 14th Amendment
What’s the end game? Hollowing out the meaning and power of the 14th amendment’s guarantee of full and equal citizenship for Black people, and for those historically marginalized groups that have also benefitted from the Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of laws. The amendment will sit then in our Constitution, fully available for the use of corporations to expand their claims to protection as “persons” (see e.g., Citizens’ United and Hobby Lobby cases expanding corporate First Amendment of corporations), but of little use for its intended beneficiaries – Black people.
Mind ascribed to AI and the appreciation of AI-generated art
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448231200248Creative artificial intelligence (AI) has received a lot of attention in recent years. Artworks that are introduced to be generated by AI (rather than a human artist) are, however, often evaluated negatively. Integrating extant research, we suggest that AI is ascribed less mind (i.e. agency and experience) which is responsible for this effect. In two experiments (N = 176 and N = 381) we observed negative indirect effects of artist information (AI vs human artist) on the appreciation of visual artworks. The AI is consistently ascribed less agency and less experience than a human artist. Higher levels of experience and agency ascribed to an artist are, in turn, associated with higher appreciation of a piece of art. In both experiments the total effect of artist information on appreciation was not significant. Artist information did not predict whether the artwork deviated positively from viewers’ expectations developed before the actual artwork was encountered.
Push notifications and news snacking: The impact of mobile news alert framing on reader engagement
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448231196580How news media, such as newspapers and magazines, is consumed has dramatically changed due to technological developments, such as mobile and high-speed Internet technology. As a result, there has been a dramatic shift in consumer consumption of news from desktop and television to mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets. Due to the shift of news consumption from desktop and television platforms to mobile, journalists have had to consider how news headlines and alerts must be tailored to match the distinctive characteristics of mobile platforms and consumers’ engagement patterns on such devices. Drawing on construal theory (CLT), this study will examine how mobile alerts should be framed to optimize engagement. Overall, it finds a combination of abstract construal through combination of a gain and other frames results in heightened levels of curiosity in readers leading to further engagement with news products.
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DEF CON 32 - Counter Deception: Defending Yourself in a World Full of Lies - Tom Cross, Greg Conti
Motion detection synth - Max/MSP
A government worker's message for Elon Musk
MBP #165 Curtis Roads
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Got a new Never Post out, where I talk with Caroline Sinders about blocking people and friend of the show Meghal Janardan talks to Laura Bower about her 00s book series From the Files of Madison Finn. New ep out this Weds!
Georgia dropped another great NP Newsletter
New Fun City in progress, hoping to get it out shortly!
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That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I hope you have had a nice weeks, week, weekend and I’ll see you all soon.
Drop a line via the comments below (maybe they work now?) or just respond to this email if you wanna say hi.
-Mike
Regarding the opening statement, I've had a related thought bouncing around in my head for a while now. It seems to me that people on the right think of institutions as inherently good or bad while people on the left realize that institutions are just made of people and will reflect those peoples' values.
I feel like there have been times when the right took over something and broke it as if to say that their ability to break it proves it was bad to begin with. But someone on the left would see that as proof that you have to value the things you are in charge of to make them work.
I wonder how this ties into religious belief and authoritarianism. Would love to read the words of someone who has thought about this better and more deeply than I.