Month: August 2025

“Out of Space: Picturing the big, crowded business of satellite internet” – Khadija Alam (Rest Of World)

Selflinks_read

“The lifespan of an internet satellite is short, and predestined. Because of atmospheric drag and the debris that accumulates on a low-altitude satellite, the average lifespan of a single LEO satellite is approximately five years, after which it reenters Earth’s atmosphere and burns up into oblivion.

In order to maintain service, companies like Starlink will have to continuously replenish the constellation of internet satellites orbiting our planet indefinitely”

https://restofworld.org/2025/satellites-space-based-internet/

“The ‘Cracked Coder’ fetish – Max Read

Selflinks_read

“But in Silicon Valley, steeped in I.Q. fetishism, an obsession with “agency,” and a moral universe still governed by fantasy high-school resentments, the belief that (heritable) single-vector “intelligence” endows one with full-spectrum authority (and, inversely, that failure to demonstrate this intelligence is delegitimizing), holds sway. “Just put 10 cracked programmers in charge of it” has become the (admittedly at least somewhat trollish) stance of the Tech Right when faced with any sufficiently un-deferential institution, enterprise, or bureaucracy”

https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-cracked-coder-fetish

“‘Epstein’ is the language of America’s unheard. The elites still don’t listen” – Will Bunch (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Selflinks_read

“From 1979 to 2019, wages after inflation rose just 3% for those on the bottom, a paltry 13.7% for those in the true middle, but 160% for the top 1% of earners and 345% for the top 0.1%. Real-world solutions like a higher minimum wage or increased taxes on the wealthy are blocked by big money in politics and creeping corporate journalism, so the tsunami of rage flows into conspiracy theories, most imagined and some real”

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/jeffrey-epstein-trump-scandal-meaning-20250727.html